


Missing Pages

by FFFantasies



Category: Filthy Frank Show - Fandom
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Blood and Gore, Multi, Polygamy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers from The Francis of the Filth Book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-01-28 07:31:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 31
Words: 35,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12601460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FFFantasies/pseuds/FFFantasies
Summary: Lives can be stories that's true, they can be grand and beautiful and sad and terrible. They can be full and still not fleshed out, they can be vague and forget the most important pieces. Sometimes things get lost in the translation between real life and the book in your hands so isn't it better to hear everything by word of mouth than words inked on a page?





	1. No Maker Me

“I  ** _made_**  you Franklin.”

He looks like another man, a….chimpilla? A rankenfile? A human? He doesn’t know what Francis of the Filth is, no one he asks seems to know and it’s strange. No one talks about Francis of the Filth either, not where Chin Chin can hear and he can hear a lot, he hears things you don’t even say.

“You’re  ** _mine_**.”

When he goes wandering through realms, all kinds of realms, and meets people, all kinds of people, they all stop and stare at him. The brute beasts stop and stare at him then they turn away and go back to whatever they were doing. The rankenfiles stare at him in fear, in horror, then they turn away quick before anyone notices and walk away as fast as they can without running. The chimpillas stare and don’t stop, they follow him with their eyes until he’s too far away to keep looking.

None of them speak to him but maybe it’s fair because he doesn’t speak to them either. He stares back just as hard and watches them until he can’t. They know who he’s supposed to be and he doesn’t.

“A servant,” Chin Chin answers whenever he asks what he is and Franklin has to be content with that. He doesn’t get different answers, he doesn’t think ever hears the questions, or he doesn’t want to think about the questions. Franklin is just a thing to him, he knows he is, he’s a little better than the two Chin Chin keeps on leashes and chains, tied up and blind, but not much.

Franklin gets to touch, gets to sit at Chin Chin’s feet when he’s lounging in his throne and sometimes he gets dragged into his creator’s lap to be poked and pet. He isn’t sure what he feels about that, when fingers with more joints than his own bend and curl in his hair, when spindly legs with wicked barbs slide along his body. He could be ripped apart by accident, he could be killed and poisoned and dead so easy, he knows it and Chin Chin knows it and he knows he’s only alive by the grace of his God.

“Betrayal is death,” Chin Chin tells him as he snaps the neck of a chimpilla, the sound of sharp and hard and final. Franklin watches dispassionately as the body falls to the ground and bleeds there. He doesn’t know what the chimpilla did and he doesn’t think it matters, there is no judge or jury here, only a God and his witness.

“Mine to use,” Chin Chin breathes as he kisses Franklin, teeth slicing his lips, his tongue, leaves him with a mouthful of blood.

“Mine to abuse,” he croons as he traces the cuts along Franklin’s hips with the same claws that caused them.

“Mine forever,” he growls as he stares Franklin down with his black, black eyes-no holes where eyes should be. Franklin smiles at his creator and nods the way he’s expected. He’s nothing, he’s a pet, a toy, something to use.

“I made you,” Chin Chin repeats petulantly, like an upset child and Franklin smiles calmly at him.


	2. Old Yeller

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxine's just a chimpilla, she's just the help but she's not heartless.

The tiers have shifted, everyone knows it and Maxine doesn’t…she doesn’t know where she falls into it anymore. She was a chimpilla, she was one of Chin Chin’s favourites, she’s not anymore but she’s still useful to him. She can hunt down rakenfiles, she can fight with brute beasts, she can track people across realms, she’s useful.

“He wants you to find Seamus of the Salamander Clan,” his servant tells her, the new one? She actually has no idea when Chin Chin got this one, where he got this one, but she knows better than to ask. She’s a good worker and she’s useful but not good enough to ask questions and nowhere near important enough to get away with snooping into His business.

“Yeah, alright,” she says, holding out her hand and waiting for him to take hers. Chin Chin uses this one like a chromo mule, a wallet even, he gives this one chromes sure but just enough to keep him around or pay whoever he’s hiring that day. She doesn’t think he gets to keep a single one for himself and she always shudders when she thinks about it but not right now. Right now she has a job.

* * *

“He’s not happy,” Franklin warns her, the servant’s name is Franklin, she found that out when she went looking for the salamander. She shrugs at him but her spine stiffens as she follows him to wherever Chin Chin’s waiting for her. She did her job, she found the salamander and she reported back the way he wanted, she doesn’t have anything to be afraid of but that doesn’t mean she isn’t terrified.

“Ore wa o Chin Chin,” he snarls at her the second she passes through the ruined doorway of the house he’s in today. Maxine catches a glimpse of spindly limbs and sharp teeth before she dips her head to stare at her feet. You don’t look at God, he doesn’t like it when you do, and she freezes where she is but Franlin keeps walking.

“He wants you to find someone else,” Franklin translates and she wants to look up, she wants to see how close he is to Chin Chin, if he’s  _touching_ the God but she doesn’t. She can’t.

“O Chin Chin.”

“He’ll pay you twice the regular rate.”

“O Chin Chin ga daisuki dayo.”

“He wants you to find Percy the Pigeon and help him find the Salamander.”

“Yes m’lord, thank you,” she breathes and waits for more, to find out why he’s mad, if he was mad with her. When Franklin touches her arm, she jumps but her head doesn’t jerk up. He takes her hand, smooths out her fingers from the fist they curled into and gives her the chromosomes his master just gave him.

She feels them all, the surge of warmth, of power and when she has them all, she has the courage to look up. Chin Chin smiles at her, all teeth, too many teeth and they’re bloody, he waves at her slow and teasing with his fingers, too many fingers and they’re immaculate. She looks at Franklin and breathes slow, careful, because his mouth is bloody, lips stained and split and he smiles at her too.

“He expects a report within a month,” Franklin tells her, squeezing her fingers with his freezing cold fingers before he lets go of her hand and turns his back on her. She watches him walk back to his master, watches him sit neatly at the foot of the chair and tilt his head backwards to rest on a boney thigh.

Maxine watches them, she watches and then she leaves. She doesn’t think about Franklin, she forces herself not to.


	3. Torture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He trusted his God, he did, and he was a fool.

Franklin is lost. He doesn’t know this realm, he doesn’t know this place, he doesn’t know what he is anymore.

“Chin Chin?” he says, whispers, asks? He doesn’t know. He’s sitting on a rock, he thinks it’s a rock because it’s hard and cold but he can’t see it, he doesn’t have his glasses and everything is vague and blurred. He doesn’t know if it’s the realm or the eyes and he has no way of knowing, he has no way of moving so he sits on the maybe-a-rock and waits.

Franklin sits and waits and shivers and blinks away tears as he waits. He can hear things, people he thinks, screaming and crying and begging for help, please help, help me please! He doesn’t know where the voices are coming from or if the voices are physical things, he doesn’t know if they’re echoes of a tortured memory or a looped hellish reality.

He knows things, even if Chin Chin thought he was too stupid to know anything. Franklin knows he’s not real, not…a person. Chin Chin made him out of spite, he wanted something that looked like his mortal enemy, he wanted have Francis. He wanted to hurt Francis, fuck him, make him bleed, make him  _suffer_ ; he wanted to use his enemy until there was nothing left but a smear of red on the floor.

Chin Chin couldn’t have Francis so he made Franklin and he used his creation however he wanted. He made him a loyal dog, he made him a fuck toy, he made him a chromosome dump, he made him dependent and stupid. Franklin isn’t a person, he’s a thing, he’s a tool, and he’s been thrown away and cast aside by his master. He’s here, somewhere, nowhere, barely existing and listening to the screams of the…wretched.

“Oh,” he whispers and the breath misting from his mouth burns his lips with their chill. He doesn’t have chromosomes and he isn’t a brute beast, he’s here because he’s been left to rot and left to slip into the sea of suffering. He’s fallen down the tiers to nothing. Chin Chin left him, got bored of him, got fed up or just forgot he existed and now there’s nothing for him to do but wait to be condemned.

He…he wants to shout, scream? He wants to make a mark on the world, to break the rock under him, to stain it with his blood and prove he lived. He isn’t Francis of the Filth, he’s not Chin Chin’s pet, he’s Franklin! He existed, he lived, he, he, he was here!

But, he can’t. He’s too weak to move, too cold to uncross his arms and too stiff to do more than suck sharp breaths between his clenched teeth. He can’t do anything but sit here and wait to die, wait to become less than nothing and suffer for the rest of eternity. Franklin never existed, he wasn’t worth anything to anyone and no one will remember him when he fades away.


	4. Fuck You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Kohe's just a guy with a few extra chromosomes, he's nothing special but he isn't heartless either.

Kohe met her in the luxury realm and he honestly has no idea what to think about a friendly chimpilla. He’s somewhere between rankenfile and mortal himself, he has no idea how that’s possible but the tiers stopped making sense a long, long time ago. Some people say it’s Francis of the Filth’s fault, they say he destroyed the Peacelords and became the one true God, they also say he’s actually Chin Chin in disguise waiting for the real Francis to show himself.

There are a lot of rumours, way too many to count or keep up with so he just doesn’t try. He’s a mortal with a few extra chromosomes, sure he makes his own but that takes a long, long time and it’s not worth the wait. He’s nothing special is what he’s trying to say, he lives life the same as before, goes lives in a ratty apartment in China Town and takes jobs across realms instead of just across town.

Before he’d drop packages for people who didn’t have the time or people who wanted to move something and couldn’t do it themselves. Sometimes it was illegal, most of the time it wasn’t, nowadays it’s the same. He’s a mortal with a few extra chromosomes and all that means is, he doesn’t set off any alarms when he sets foot in a new realm, no one picks up on him and he can move freely. Sure it takes a fucking long time to move between realms sometimes but the pay-out is usually pretty good.

So now, he’s making a drop across realms with Maxine tagging along because she’s bored. He doesn’t know why she’s interested in him but she’s harmless, mostly, to him, sort of…she won’t kill him and leave him to rot in a ditch. They’re taking a train because trains run between realms if you know which cars to sit in and she’s bored because she doesn’t like waiting so they’re playing a game. Kohe will describe a person and Maxine will try to figure out who he’s looking at, then she’ll take over and they’ll go back and forth until she gets bored of that too.

The game’s easy right now because the platform is full of people today and he’s good at descriptions.

“Shades, long hair, blue shirt, scruff but not a beard, looks like he’s coming off crack,” he rattles off, shifting his bag so the package rests more comfortably on his hip. The guy really does look like he’s coming off crack, his skin is pale and his hair’s greasy, he’s shaking too and looks like he’d fall over if there weren’t so many people holding him up. Kohe watches the man stumble and fall against the wall, chest heaving as he breathes and hmm, he looks like someone Kohe should know.

“…Franklin?” Maxine growls so low Kohe almost doesn’t hear it, but he does and he doesn’t even get a chance to think before he’s taking a step back, away from the dangerous woman shoving her way through the crowd to the man. Kohe hesitates for a second because what if this man is dangerous? He follows after her before the second is up, apologizing to the people she elbowed and catching a few hissed and snarled words as he steps behind her. He hears ‘Chin Chin’ and ‘suffering sea’ and ‘

“This is Chin Chin’s servant, Franklin,” Maxine explains, hands fluttering around the man’s face but never touching him. He isn’t sure if it’s because she thinks she’ll hurt him or because she thinks the man will bite.

“Fuck him!” Franklin howls more animal than human, throwing his head back and showing off the bruises around his neck and the crowd around them draws away. Kohe catches himself glaring at some of them while Maxine grits her teeth and looks down.

“ _Was_  his servant,” Maxine corrects herself through those grit teeth and he can guess then, guess what Franklin used to do because Chin Chin’s servants aren’t…they’re…people feel sorry for them or people hate them, or both. Kohe never cared, they were so beyond him and what he did, like celebrities who he’d never meet and now he doesn’t know what to think or feel.

“He left me…to rot,” Franklin grunts and Kohe’s heard about those places at the edge of realms, terrible places where the lowest tier liv- _exists_. People call it the sea of suffering and it’s probably the most apt name because if Franklin was there and got out, somehow, someway then he definitely looks like he came from a place for suffering.

“He’s gone now,” Maxine mutters but she’s not sure, no one is, no one knows where the Peacelords went but no one’s going to go looking.

“Good,” Franklin breathes as the train pulls into the station and the crow’s all too eager to get on and get away from them. Kohe should leave too, he has a job and he has a package to deliver. He can leave Franklin with Maxine and meet them when he gets back, he should be leaving, he isn’t leaving.

“We can take him to my place, get you something to eat maybe?” he offers and Maxine nods, she wraps an arm around Franklin’s waist while Kohe gets him from the other side and together they carry him down the stairs while the train pulls out of the station.


	5. Start Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Francis cares because if he doesn't who will?

Frank doesn’t know why he cares, he just does, he cares about all these cast aside creatures Chin Chin used. He shouldn’t, there’s no reason for him to care but he remembers what God told him and he thinks it’s not so bad to care about them, so he stops thinking about the whys and why nots and just does it.

The first one he finds is something called Plastic Pinocchio, a strange creature trapped between tiers and lashing out at anything that came too close. Pink Guy wanted to fight it, was going to attack the silver thing in their bathtub before Saf grabbed him by the waist and ran from the room. Frank doesn’t know what Pink would’ve done, if he would’ve killed Chin Chin’s old henchman or just beat him until he couldn’t move but Frank’s glad he didn’t get the chance.

Pinocchio wasn’t hard to sway, the silver man was starving and confused, he didn’t even know how he snuck through the bathroom portal, Frank still thinks Sal left it open. Gaining Pinocchio’s trust was easy, just tell him Chin Chin was dead, tell him he was safe here and give him food. He wasn’t a complicated thing, he liked to play tricks and was a mischief maker but he wasn’t evil, not really.

Frank has no idea where Pinocchio goes all the time, which realms, what he does but he doesn’t really care so long as Pinocchio comes back and he always does. He’ll show up in the middle of the night and scare Pink Guy or he’ll pop in during dinner and climb onto the fridge with a bowl of God knows what. Somehow Chin Chin’s old servant fits in well with them, just another part of their weird fucking family.

Maxine is the next one and Frank well and truly finds her out in one of the edge realms, one that’s just like the ricefields but not as hospitable. He doesn’t remember what he was doing out there, if he was actually looking for her or something but he found her. Found her fighting off a huge old crow, avoiding talons the length of her forearm and ducking the beak trying to peck off her head.

Killing the thing would’ve been easy, he’d killed lots of things before but he didn’t kill the crow. He snatched her from under the bird instead and dragged her through a portal before she could stop him. She’d slapped him across the face, and punched him in the jaw because she wasn’t a bag of rice cunt and yeah alright she needed the help but fucking ask before you grab people cunt.

Maxine is very different to Pinocchio, she doesn’t follow him home and he doesn’t ask her to come, he lets her stomp off through the swamp he took them too and goes wandering again. He doesn’t expect to see her again but he isn’t exactly surprised when he sees her while he’s on a ramen run in the luxury realm. She’s there with some guy, laughing too loud and pointing at something he can’t see. She doesn’t see him and he doesn’t go talk but he wonders what Chin Chin’s old tracker is up to these days because Saf knows everyone and there aren’t many chimpillas that match; angry Aussie woman.

He sees her around more often after that though, sees her with the same guy all over the place. They’re in the luxury realm eating in a restaurant, they’re in the Salamander realm sloshing through the water, they’re in the Negi realm looking at the clock, they’re in the monoxide realm with gasmasks and a map. They’re everywhere and Frank really doesn’t know why, he doesn’t ask either, he just makes sure they’re okay and nothing is stalking them.

He doesn’t think they ever know he’s there and that’s fine, that’s okay, then they bring a man who looks exactly like him and dumps him on the couch. Maxine looks him dead in the eye and the guy who’s always with her wanders off to the kitchen.

“Chin Chin left him to die in between the realms, he’s supposed to be you,” is what she says.

“He looks like shit,” is what he tells her.

“Then you could be twins, ha ha!” Safari Man laughs from the bedroom and just like that they have a new member of their mix-matched family.


	6. Fire & Whispers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're not cursed and you're not blessed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Based on art by captainmaxi00](https://captainmaxi00.tumblr.com/post/166963415465/chin-chin-but-hes-spooky-3-this-kinda-started)

It’s ever so easy, wouldn’t you say? To forget the one to whom you pray, to wake up one day and forget the one to whom you’re  ** _prey_**. Ah isn’t he beautiful, isn’t he grand? Isn’t he something horrific and terrible and oh so far beyond man?

He’s something you build temples to, something you immortalize in stone and steel and blood. He’s something beyond you, so far beyond you it’s almost maddening to think about and euphoric to understand. A Dark Lord, a Dark God of smoke and shadow and darkness. A Dark God you sacrifice to and you pray too and you beg please my Lord let me please you. He’s something to please and to pleasure because the alternative isn’t death, oh no death would be to simple and too kind.

You worship him out of bone shaking fear, you pray to him out of mind numbing terror because you can’t think about what happens after. After you say no and take a stand, after you curse his name and defile his altar. You know what happens but you don’t say, you don’t think, isn’t it better when you don’t do anything but what your God asks of you? Of course it is because you are a good servant, loyal and good and in the event of your betrayal, missed for a second which makes no dent compared to the eons.

Could you tell me what he is? What makes him so fearsome? Is it the laughter that scratches and hisses in your head? The words you don’t understand but obey because they brand themselves into your brain, your brain that can’t parse it, can’t make a shred of sense of it all but your animal instinct responds. Is it the snarling and roars echoing across the realms? The sounds no animal could make but no human mouth could speak, the sounds that send all the living things racing away and remind the dead of the secrets they keep?

What about him is so terrible, tell me, use all your words and explain. I want to hear it, I want to know, is it the simple depth of his darkness? Something almost nebulous in how unknowing and vast it is? Touching him, well you might as well be sticking your hand into the emptiness of space, no? Sticking your hand into a creche of nebulae long after the infants have been slaughtered and not even a speck of light from the weakest dwarf star is left, don’t you think?

So is that it? Or is it the toxic miasma of our Lord? The way his very presence starts to spoil and soil a realm, leaching into the dirt and killing as it goes, he corrupts the world around him, bends and warps it to his dimensions and persuasions. He’s a disease and a plague all together burning his way through the realms, consuming everything in his path but he’s still hungry, oh he’s starving.

He wants it all, he wants everything you could think of and more. He wants this world, these realms, he wants power and he wants forever and is that what terrifies your poor animal mind? Cowed and forced silent by the reality of his evil? Tell me! What about him makes your skin crawl and your blood cold?

What could keep you stock still, frozen stiff about the Dark God you serve when you haven’t seen him in his Prime?! Nothing! Nothing could compare to what he is when he shrugs off his trappings and accoutrements of humanity. When he rips off the mask across his mouth, when he opens his eyeless eyes and shows us all what a true God is like.

How could you fear him when you’ve never seen fire spill from his hollow eyes like the tears you’d cry as you fall to your knees before him? How could you claim to be his devotee when you’ve never seen poison, thick and acidic drip from his jaws, his real jaw mind you. Not the one he wears as his mask, not the one with small human teeth, no no no  _no no **no**_!

No! You have no right to him until you’ve  **seen**  him. You can’t call him your Lord until you’ve seen his true mouth split open around his thunderous laughter, until you catch your reflection in the shine of his teeth, all of his teeth, too many and too sharp and too many rows. You’re not his until you see your death in the curve of his spine or your salvation in the curl of his smirk, you aren’t his until you give yourself to him. Throw yourself to him and pray he doesn’t tear you to pieces, you can’t be.

Not until you’ve seen his jaws bloody with his latest kill, something massive and savage, until you’ve seen him lick the blood from his fingers. The sound of his spit sizzling where it falls is one you remember, the pleased grunts and keening laughter follow into your dreams, always. When you see it, if you see it, you’ll never forget it. The slide of his tongue along his fingers, around each joint, and along every claw. If you’re lucky, you’ll be haunted by the scent of silver blood and the sound of frenzied chewing, the  _rip_  of flesh and muscle and sinew, the  _crunch_  of bone.

Captured by the slick, messy wet noise of a carcass being torn into, enraptured by the sickeningly lush sound of swallowing and the moans of pleasure after. You’d never forget the horror of his love, your Dark God, because to worship him is to be damned and his blessings are to curse. If you deserved it, he would make you his through terror and fear and obsession. He would break.  _you_.  ** _down_**. He would leave you broken until he got bored enough to make something better from your shatter-glass pieces.

So tell me, what about him terrifies you?

So tell me, how easy is it to forget your Dark God?


	7. Book of Prometheus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chin Chin is a God and all Gods have their lowest points, their weakest moments that buoy them up and show them what real power can be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for eye horror.

The threads were silver to bind and silver for purification. The threads were silver to burn and silver to hurt every fucking second of every fucking day for the rest of his fucking life.

“Ore Wa!” Chin Chin howled into the night, thrashing around and cracking the trees around him. The Peacelords did this, the fucking Peacelords who were scared of him, terrified of his power. The fucking cocksuckers who wanted to stay on top and never get knocked off their gleaming golden thrones.

“Ga Daisuki!” he screeched as he reached up to tear at his bleeding eyes and screeched again when the threads stayed where they were. He couldn’t break them, not yet, not so weak. He was one of them! He was a Peacelord too and those fucking cunts wanted to  _bind_  him? They wanted to  **break**  him? They wanted to banish  ** _him_**?!

“O Chin Chin!” he screamed to the cold, pitiless night, he was the greatest among them! None of them could grow chromosomes as fast as he could, none of them knew how powerful he was and they didn’t want to know. None of them wanted to accept him as one of them and they’d live to regret it. Chin Chin swore they would, he screamed and cursed and damned them all to see him rise right to the top of the tiers.

They would see him as the God he was. He would flay the flesh from their bones, leave them bloody lumps of meat floating like jetsam on the sea of suffering. He’d leave them chromosome starved and weak but not weak enough to drown with the Wretched, he would Condemn but he’d make sure they’d suffer chromosomes before they finally fell into that mire. Chin Chin would make them all beg him for mercy, beg him to please please kill them!

“Nandayo!” he snarled, curling his fingers into fists and beating at his temples until his ears rang with the sound of his own heartbeat. They took his eyes, he’d take their lives. He clawed at the threads again, again, again. They took his chromosomes, he’d take their power. He bit his lips until his mouth was full of his own acidic blood, until it leaked between his teeth and burned the hard dirt under his feet.

They took his believers, he would take their belief.

“Ore wa o Chin Chin ga daisuki nandayo,” he swore, quiet, so quiet, under his breath and through his blood. He would make them suffer and he would make them pay and he would be the One True God.


	8. Big Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He prefers a gun to his fists and he prefers careful planning to action. He's not a fighter, he's a tracker and he's best at what he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for animal death

Stalking through the grass is familiar even though it’s been so long since he went on a good long hunt. He missed the feeling of a gun in his hands, the smell of the gunpowder, the weight of it and the heft it. He missed the sound of it right near his head,  _bang_!

“Ha ha,” he grunts under his breath as he drops to his knees and ducks under a fallen log. This realm is abandoned by people but not animals which is perfect, it’s a beautiful place after all and animals like beauty the same as people. Safari Man loves hunting through these realms, he gets to see things no one else does and to be something no one else is either.

Saf knows how to stalk through the tall grasses crouched down low, he knows how to scurry up a tree and still, silent for hours if he has to. He’s a good hunter, one of the best and it’s been too long since he took his gun out to an abandoned realm to find a pretty trophy. Now he’s on his belly, hiding between the grasses on the very edge of a river as he watches for his prey to amble by.

Frank wanted something nice for the apartment, something expensive and Saf knows he was joking about that but it’s a good excuse to disappear for a few days. He breathes slow and steady, cocking his gun and sighting along the rifle’s barrel, he can feel the sweet ache of his muscles from running for so long and he can feel the dry scratch in his dry throat. Saf aches in all the good ways a good hunt always makes him and he’s missed this so much it’s a physical pang.

He’s been tracking a pride of ligers across the realm all day, chasing them from edge to edge while trying to good shot in. He hadn’t realized there were cubs with them, a bad mistake, but he was good enough that it didn’t matter. Instead of charging the pride and searching out the weakest members, he corralled them and lead them to vulnerable positions, hoping for a clean shot at a big male. There are at least three in this pride with two more juveniles and six cubs and he knows he could take out a cub and a juvenile no problem but he doesn’t want one of those.

Saf wants a big male, something impressive with a lot of meat and plenty of bones. Every little bit of the animal will sell on the markets five realms over and he wants the pelt. He wants to skin it, gut it, strip the meat off and stretch the skin for curing, he wants to earn every penny he’ll make off this cat. So he’ll wait in the cool, damp dirt for the cats to stop to drink and he’ll take a nice prize.

He breathes deep as a deer wanders across his trail and he holds his breath when the pride stops to drink, ears twitch, tails lashing. They know he’s around, they’re smart animals and they know the strange two legs wouldn’t give up so easy, they don’t know if he’s dangerous enough to wipe out the pride but they know he can kill them. They even have a juvenile prowling up and down their river bank, a clear shot for him, but they know he won’t take it because he already would have if he was going to.

The deer lopes away after another minute or two and Saf settles his rifle better, keeps his eyes trained on the three large males. He wants the second oldest male, a beautiful coat pattern and not the main male of the pride, these ligers aren’t like lions that only let one adult male stay in the pride and they aren’t like tigers that avoid each other at all cost. Ligers are smarter than either of their composite cats, they’re gorgeous and know how to protect their own.

A cub falls into the water and the juvenile lunges for it before he remembers he’s on guard and the oldest of the adult males is exposed. Saf would prefer the second oldest but he’ll take whichever, the older male will be tougher, meat not as sweet but still good and he breathes normally as he lines up his shot.

The juvenile is preoccupied with the cub and the adult male swings his head back around, exposing the sweet spot behind his head and Saf takes the shot. The bullet chambers and the butt’s already braced against his shoulder, the kick back is almost hurts but he doesn’t jerk back at all, good. The sound startles the pride and the females take the cubs up, snatch them by the neck scruffs and take off running, the juveniles tailing as all twenty scamper back into the jungle, leaving the eldest male dead on the river bank.

Saf knows he has to work quick before they come looking for it. He scrambles and splashes through the river, swimming part of the way before he gets to the body. The male is dead, dead on impact just the way he wanted the wound barely made a hole in the pelt, even better. Saf rolls the animal onto it’s back, better for transport and pulls out his hunting knife, he has to move it fast and even though he doesn’t like travelling like this, he doesn’t have many options.

He sets the blade against his palm and pulls it quick so the slice is shallow enough not to damage any nerves but deep enough to bleed the way he needs it to. Then he sets the circle, a little shaky because it’s been a while since he’s done this too but good enough to travel. His prize is in the middle and he knows the co-ordinates to a truly abandoned realm, a safe place for him to skin and gut the animal. The jungle starts to fall away around him and he grabs his pelt in one hand and his rifle in the other.

Frank will be so impressed he thinks smugly before his lungs fill with silty river water and he can’t see anything but the dancing sunlight so high above.


	9. Plastic Tastes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They like to pretend because it's easier than admitting their truth. They are a good servant and that's easier to say than they are a good dog.

They are his first servant and they are his first…friend. The Dark Lord will never say it and the Dark Lord will never think it but they know it’s the truth and they hold that thought near and dear. When they do his work, dirty their hands with the blood of whoever their Lord finds worthy of death.

They…don’t hate being a devoted servant, this is better than the life they had before. Here, living and existing as the herald of a Peacelord is better than scavenging around the edges of a realm and struggling to find the chromosomes to buy a decent meal every so often. At Chin Chin’s feet, they have everything and they have nothing.

“Ore wa,” Chin Chin mumbles from the throne and they drag another frozen body to the feet of the throne then crouch by the side. They try not to shiver in the cold as their Lord picks apart the frozen lycra they caught creeping through the realm. Pinocchio winces behind their mask as bones snap and flesh breaks, they were never a savage, never found pleasure in causing pain. Oh they like watching blood smear on the floor, hearing a few screams but they don’t relish in it the way their Lord does.

Pinocchio is a simple creature, they just want a simple life; food, stability, someone who cares whether they live or die. Chin Chin gives them two of the three and they can pretend for the third, lie to themself about it and call themself Chin Chin’s friend when they know their Lord doesn’t keep friends. He has allies and he has servants, he has believers and followers, and he has enemies, so many enemies.

“O Chin Chin.”

Pinocchio crawls onto the throne, perches on the arm and props their mask up, opens their mouth and doesn’t think too hard about the meat on their tongue. They know what it is and they try to forget but they’re already drooling around the frozen bit of flesh, they know how sweet it is, the gush of blood and crackle of gristle. They bite down, chew fast when their Lord taps their chin with a bloody finger, they tip their head back as they chew and swallow as soon as they can.

Chin Chin snickers watching them, chuckling and it sounds like a snake hissing. Pinocchio doesn’t care what they look like as they open their mouth for more, they don’t care if it makes them pathetic or nothing more than a pet, they don’t care what they’re eating, only that they’re eating. They lick the blood off their lips and they suck it from Chin Chin’s fingers when those linger on their tongue, they’re just a sad little animal taking whatever they can get.

“O Chin Chin,” their Lord murmurs and Pinocchio scrambles off to obey, dragging another body and back onto the arm of the throne, waiting for their meal. They are Chin Chin’s first servant and in a way, they are Chin Chin’s first friend, here they are sharing a meal after all and isn’t that something friends do?


	10. Insomnolence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are things that haunt him and things that terrify him. Dreams and memories and everything in between. Power doesn't guarantee safety after all and power can be lonely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for panic attacks and imagined death.

Sleep is bad, don’t need it. Why should I? Close my eyes, let myself fall, fall, fall, falling forever, falling into forever. What’s waiting? Who’s waiting for me to be weak and powerless?

Can’t do it, can’t be vulnerable and can’t fall away to nothing so there’s nothing to do but just not sleep. Stay up, pace up down, up down, down up, back again all over again. Go around the house, go through the door, go down the stairs, go around the block, go around the city, go go go and don’t stop.

That’s right, that’s it. Just keep walking Frank and it’ll be fine, everyone will be safe. Even when your eyes burn and your feet hurt and your head pounds with how tired you are, just keep going. You’re a Peacelord, you’re powerful, you’re smart, you’re…stupid.

Breathe. Can’t. Can’t breathe. He can’t  ** _breathe_**.

He wakes up gasping and fighting for breath and for a second, for a split second, Frank  ** _can’t_**  breathe. His mouth’s open, his eyes are open, he’s staring into the black black dark of the room and he can’t  _breathe_. His heart is pounding and his chest is aching and he. Can’t. Breathe.

“Fuck!” he wheezes, voice grating, gravely and broken. He slaps his chest, harder than he means to but the hollow thud is the only thing that registers, not the pain, not the burning. He’s sitting in bed, covered in sweat and he can’t feel anything but the air whistling down his throat. In and out, out in, he’s rocking as he breathes and he doesn’t have the strength to stop himself.

Frank tries to breathe slow because he knows if he keeps panting like this he’ll pass back out but even that fear doesn’t stop him. He was…somewhere. He doesn’t know if it was a dream or another vision, if he can still have those or if they’ve stopped with all the others dead. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t doesn’t does not.

He’s home, in bed even though he didn’t fall asleep here. He knows he’s safe, he knows one of his friends brought him here and he knows they tucked him in. He knows they care and he knows they worry and it makes him want to run, again. He can’t do this to them, he can’t let this happen to them.

When he looks up through the murky water, when he fights and punches at it, kicks his way through it, he should be the only one drowning. They shouldn’t be sucked down with him, they shouldn’t have someone flinging things down at them too because they’re friends with him. They deserve to have happy lives, safe lives, and he doesn’t know if he can give them that. Fuck, Frank doesn’t even know if he was having a dream or another prophetic vision!

When he breathes deep, he can taste the lake water at the back of his throat and when he blinks he can see the sunlight filtering down. He can almost feel the sickening coolness of the water around him and he has to force himself not to beat the somber silence from his ears. Instead, he stares into the darkness of the room and counts the breaths he can hear, he listens for his friends and counts their breaths to steady his.

If they’re breathing, they’re alive and he has to keep breathing to keep them breathing. He’s powerful, he needs to protect them, he loves them, he needs to protect them.

~

Burning, he’s burning, can’t get out, can’t get away, burning up in fire and ash. Going to roast, cook,  _die_.

“Frank!”

The sting of the slap is a love tap compared to the pounding in his head and the kick in his gut and Frank wakes up with a scream in his throat, strangling him.

“Frank, what?” Safari Man, Safari Man was the one to slap him, wake him up, get him away from the fire and the burning. Frank can barely see his friend’s face in the dark, in the living room? He, he doesn’t know what time it is or why he’s here, where’s everyone else?

“Dream, bad dream,” he rasps and his voice sounds like he’s been breathing in smoke for hours, and hasn’t he? Racing through a burning forest, screaming and crying and looking for his friends. Ducking through blazing doorways and being pelted with embers as a building fell down on him, desperate to find someone, anyone.

Frank doesn’t know what hurts more now though, the look on Saf’s face or the burning of his own. He can feel the flames licking along his skin, cooking him alive, he can feel the bubbling of his flesh, the sizzling of his blood. He remembers the way his bones charred and snapped and if he thinks too hard, he can feel the heat pressing in around him.

“You need a drink my friend,” Saf mumurs and gets to his feet, takes one step and doesn’t get further because Frank’s holding him back. He doesn’t know why they left him on the couch because he remembers that they were all watching a movie, he remembers now that the fire isn’t trying to eat him whole but he still doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know if everyone’s asleep in the next room or if they went out.

All he knows is, Safari Man is here, Safari Man is safe, he can’t let Safari Man leave.

“Stay here, please,” he adds quietly, refusing to meet his friend’s concerned eyes but refusing to let go either. He doesn’t want to be alone, he never has and right now he  _can’t_  be alone.

Saf doesn’t answer, not with words, he just takes that step back and sits. Frank doesn’t know how long they sit and he doesn’t know when Saf nods off against his shoulder and he doesn’t know when he started crying but he’s come to terms with all the things he doesn’t know. He’s a pro.

~

Waking up is never peaceful, the last time it was, he woke up to find the purest creature he’d ever come across was dead. Sleep isn’t something he likes and he puts it off as long as he can, as much as he can. He drinks cups of coffee like water, he’d mainline that shit right into his bloodstream if he could but he can’t, not yet at least.

Frank doesn’t like to sleep because every time he does, he dreams and when he dreams, he sees possible futures. He sees his friends burning to death, boiling in their own skins or becoming ash blown away in the wind. He see them with him as they all drown, dragged down down down by some massive creature he never gets a good look at. He dreams them being torn apart, ripped apart, bleeding out, suffocating, starving, freezing, dying dying dying.

Frank dreams of death and death dreams of him.

Waking up is never peaceful but going to sleep can be, sometimes. When he knows he can’t put it off or push it away any longer, when his eyes burn worse than phantom fire and he can barely move, when that happens, Frank finds his friends. The ones he dreams and he asks them to come sleep, and they do, all of them do because they’re good friends.

Everyone climbs into bed, fitting themselves in, finding a space, laying on top of each other and around each other and figuring out where to go. Frank is always in the middle, always between them all even though he’s the strongest one, the one who has to protect them all. He’s in the middle and they all wrap around him, make sure they’re touching him somewhere and then they start to talk.

Salamander Man hums a song, Pink Guy helps. Safari Man talks about a new restaurant and Percy says it’s actually shit. Centurion asks about that Lemon and Negi prattles on about who knows what. They all talk, quietly, but loud enough for him to hear because he needs to hear them. He needs to know they’re there as he drifts off, he needs their chatter and their presence.

He needs them.


	11. Percy the Clutch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's Percy the Pigeon bitch and he's the best damn friend around.

Frank’s the first friend he’s ever had and Percy can never forget that, Frank didn’t threaten to shoot him out of the sky and he didn’t shoo him off. Frank shared food with him and didn’t give him too much shit for the chicken eggs, Frank’s a good guy and he’s powerful but he don’t lord it over nobody. Percy don’t really know what to make of his friend, the guy’s a Peacelord no doubt and he made Percy one too but he don’t seem to care about that.

Percy remembers back when he was a chick, sitting in the nest with his brother Petey and his dad’d tell them about the Peacelords. Nasty bitches who don’t care about nothing and nobody, they just want to get more chromes and they wanna stay on top. Their dad’d tell them not to fuck with no Peacelords cause they’re bad news boys, real bad news and you don’t need no more troubles around here.

Percy remembers the night his dad never came home and when he left the nest for the first time to look. That was the first night he went down to the village and it was the last night he spent as a chick because watching those people celebrating and dancing around their fire, eating his dad, that was some shit, you know?

Percy ruffles his feathers and twitches a little before he resettles in his new nest. He took care of Petey after that, they were the same age but Percy was a whole hour older and he was the one who knew what the world was like. He made sure there was food to eat and no one found the nest, he shit on anyone who came close and he learned a little more about the world from people travelling by. He was near full grown by the time the tatums settled in and he was a year into adulthood when Petey got shot down by a hunter, shot right out of the damn sky.

He remembers that night too, and that day, the whole night he spent waiting for his brother to get back home and the whole day he flew around looking and looking. He never did find Petey but he found the son of a bitch who shot his lil brother, made sure to cover the bitch in shit and steal the gun that did it. He never got to bury his brother or his dad but he got to keep the gun and the memories and it was okay for a little bit.

Then Frank showed up, confused, looking for a place to stay and trying to catch fish in the river. Percy still don’t know what was so interesting about the weird chimpilla that showed up on the banks of his river. He don’t know what made him give the guy advice or ask for some of the fish he caught, he mostly kept to himself and took care of his stupid chickens. They were ugly sons of bitches but they made him money and kept him company, they were okay, ugly but alright.

And looking back at everything Frank gave him, Percy’s got an obligation to help the guy out. He stopped the crazy bitch with the shotgun and he took on that Octopussy, even if he got iced, Frank brought him back right? Frank saved his life and Frank gives him a place to live and Frank gave him more friends and Percy just wants Frank to be okay man. He loves Frank and maybe it’s a lil gay but he don’t give a fuck, why should he?

He loves Frank like family and like a friend, just a lil more intense is all. He doesn’t know if this’s even got a name or not so he doesn’t worry about it too much. What he worries about is Frank waking up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat and staring at nothing. He worries when someone’s gotta slap Frank awake cause he’s not breathing or he’s begging for someone to just kill him already.

When Frank gets up in the middle of the night and shakes for hours, Percy watches him, all night if he needs to. When Frank leaves in the coldest part of the night, shivering and cursing under his breath, Percy mutters under his breath too but jumps out the window and follows up top. He soars through the freezing air and looks down at the sparkling sleeping city he’s slowly starting to love.

Frank makes a round of the block, then back up to the apartment and Percy perches on the balcony, waiting for it start all over again. Sometimes they go further and Percy really gets to stretch his wings and play at Peacelord for a while, it’s cool, feeling the power from the tip of his feathers to the bottom of his talons. He can make a tornado with a down flap and shoot into the air with a single up flap, he can fly right up to a star and peck at it. He can do shit he never thought possible and it’s all cause of Frank who walks around on the ground like he couldn’t do what Percy does.

If that’s what Frank wants though then whatever, Percy’ll fly around and Frank’ll walk. Frank walks into a restaurant run by some Negis and Percy perches on a clothesline with some other pigeons. Different to him of course, smaller, ratty lil sons of bitches but they speak the same language and it’s good to hear the news around town. Some of them don’t wanna talk to him, which is fair, he just shoos em off and listens to people talking nearby instead.

Sometimes Safari Guy will go with Frank, or Pink Man, Seamus likes to wander around too and they make up a schedule but no one knows Percy always goes. They don’t know that he does either, he sleeps in the corner of the kitchen on the counter where the coffee maker used to be. He’s got a nest made from old blankets and no one notices when he slips out through the balcony. Nobody notices the red eyes from a night spent flying around, he’s a pigeon, they just think it’s normal.

He doesn’t mind though, he can catch up on his sleep during the day, or when Safari Guy wants to go karaoke singing. Percy likes it, he feels safe here and he’ll keep flying nights until Frank does too and it reminds him of Petey in a way but only in a way. Frank ain’t his lil brother and Percy’s okay with that, he ruffles his feathers again and preens a little bit.

The night’s young and Frank’s watching a movie with the Pink Man but Percy’s bedding down early. He can tell this’ll be a long walk night and he likes to take a nap before those. He doesn’t worry about sleeping through Frank slipping out, Frank ain’t the only one around this place who can set up chromosome alarms. Frank uses his to figure out if powerful creatures wander into the realm, Percy just uses one to tell him when Frank walks out the door.

It’ll be fine and Frank’ll be fine too but until then, he has Percy. He just hopes he’s enough.


	12. Star Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Franklin's never seen someone so ethereal before and he just wants more, so much more, if he can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Based on the art of Frankly-Unimpressed](https://frankly-unimpressed.tumblr.com/post/157079846946/franklyfilthyfantasies-3-hope-i-did-the-details)

Franklin…saw different from the way most people did and he didn’t know if it was something Chin Chin did or part of being a doppelganger of Francis because that’s what he was. A doppelganger, not a shadow, not a fake, not something Chin Chin made either, he was something Chin Chin found and twisted into a devoted lackey. He wasn’t not Chin Chin’s though, he was as much the Dark God’s devotee as he was Francis of the Filth at this point and of all the things he thinks about when it’s dark and he can’t sleep, this was one.

Frank saw things other people didn’t, he saw colours other people couldn’t and he saw…he saw what they really were underneath all the lies and deceit. For a long, long time, he thought it was something Chin Chin gave him, like these eyes, these cursed black eyes his Lord could see out of whenever he wanted. He thought it was something Chin Chin needed, being able to peel back the layers of a person and stare right at their vulnerable soul.

Now Frank knows better and knows nothing at all. He had no idea what any of the colours meant, what any of the things he saw meant. He didn’t know what the water drops clinging to Maxine’s hair was supposed to represent, why she was always covered in shades of blue, why her eyes never stayed one colour except when she smiled. She was beautiful, no fucking doubt but he didn’t understand why she was beautiful. She was cool like water, and Franklin never learned how to swim, he’d drown if he fell into her but it didn’t stop him from glancing down into her depths.

Francis was well, it was better not to look at his doppelganger most days. He was a vast unknowable…thing and Franklin knows why Chin Chin wanted to kill him off. If Chin Chin was a black hole consuming everything then Frank was the white hole creating as fast as Chin Chin could destroy. If Chin Chin was the creche of nebulae after the death then Frank was the creche when it was fresh and young and that’s all he could say about either of them. They were complimentary and just as unknowable as each other.

Franklin knew the only reason he’d never feared Chin Chin the way he should have was because he’d been trained not to run. Trained to sit, stay, roll over, good dog, here’s a treat. Even when he got left in that wretched halfway place, off beyond the edges of existence, blind and helpless, he’d waited and waited and waited for so long after he was finally able to move. He’d been a good servant and waited for his Master, he’d been a good devotee and believed in hi God as long as he could.

Sometimes the things he saw warned him about people, it was why Chin Chin would send him to pay other servants the chromosomes they were due. Franklin could see whatever they were planning, see if they wanted to bail and run, see if they were going to double cross his Master and he dealt with them before it became an issue. Sometimes the things he saw made him want to know more about a person.

Safari Man, Franklin wanted to know him, he was all dashing reds and warm yellows, he’ was sunlight and adventure. He was no fighter but he could take care of himself if he had to, he would be a coward if it meant living another day, he would be brave if there was no other option left. Safari Man knew how to endure and Franklin could admire that, he wanted to bask in all of it until the bone deep chill was chased away from his bones.

Other times, other times the things he saw made him want to know what they meant. Like Maxine and her water drops, he wanted to trace each of them with his finger tips and learn the shape of her soul. He wanted to kiss her maybe, see if she tasted as cool as she looked, wanted to lay with her and see if it was like falling into the depths of some merciless ocean.

He wanted to know Maxie and he wanted to know Kohe, the man who’d taken him in that day he showed up on the platform, shaking from an adrenaline high and a chromosome drain and a realm jump. The man who helped him down the stairs and made him something warm, tea or something, Franklin couldn’t remember what it was only that it burned his frostbitten hands and he’d never wanted to let go.

He hadn’t been able to see for so long that he’d forgotten what it was like, what colour was like, what souls were like. He’d taken three days before he noticed Kohe but in his defense, he hadn’t been able to look away since. Not from the stars scattered in his darkly brown hair, or no, only darkly brown in the dark because in the light, the true colours showed through. In the sunlight, Franklin saw not just the stars but the dragon’s blood purple and the siren’s tears blue, in the dark he only saw the other colorus when the starts twinkled bright.

Kohe was full of stars, they sparkled in his hair and they shone on his skin, they lit him up with an ethereal glow Franklin just wanted to bask in for hours and hours until he was drunk off it. He wanted to trace the constellations scattered across Kohe’s skin like the night sky, he wanted to name them all and learn them all. Franklin wanted to touch the gas giants always serenely circling Kohe’s head, always calm until they weren’t until Kohe was stressed or agitated or mad or sad, or anything other than relaxed. Then, then they erupted into formless puffs of gas, spinning out of control, angry and terrible.

Franklin wanted to press a kiss to the angry red stumps where fifth fingers ended too abruptly. He didn’t get to see Kohe’s hands often, always hidden away under gloves, always glowing dimly under the cloth but the few times he got his glimpses, he wanted to soothe the super nova pink of them. He wanted to calm the scars back down to the lilacs and sapphires his skin should be, he wanted to coax stars to move back to the ruined skin.

Franklin wanted to help, help Kohe in return for his kindness. Franklin wanted to learn him because he was already caught up in his orbit the same as the celestial bodies he carried with him. Franklin wanted to love him, if that was okay, if he wasn’t too broken and too little and too twisted to love. He didn’t even care if it was returned, he just wanted the chance to love someone so beautiful and so surreal who couldn’t even how mesmerizing they were.

He saw the world different, he saw people differently, he lived in a world of colours that didn’t exist and saw things that made no sense. He could be crazy, he could have lost his mind in between the realms, chromosome starvation can do a lot to a creature but he didn’t even care. Franklin didn’t give a fuck how crazy he was so long as he got a chance, just a chance, it was all he needed.


	13. Move Along

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What to do when your Dark God looses interest? Find you a fine huney to get over him with ;)

He stops visiting her one day and Isabella doesn’t notice until months have gone by. She thinks it’s strange and finds it weird but it doesn’t really bother her, she always knew there’d be a day he stopped, just…stopped. Isabella never expected him to stay forever, fuck she still had no idea who he was, or what so when he stops coming, she doesn’t try to look.

This thing they’ve had was always by his rules. He’d show up when she was brushing her teeth, just appear in her tub and she’d fling something at him and he’d snicker while he caught whatever and started playing catch with it. She’d wake up to him in her kitchen, sitting at the table or gnawing on something bloody while she hissed at him to not get blood on her fucking floor. Once he was curled up on her bed, thumbing through one of her books enough though he doesn’t exactly have eyes to read with.

She didn’t get to call him, she didn’t even get to see him if he didn’t want her to and if she’s honest with herself, Isabella doesn’t know if she likes him or tolerates him. She doesn’t know where he came from, why she just accepted him as part of her life now. He was part of the apartment, there when she first moved in, there after every party, there after every trip home. Sometimes she thought he was a ghost, ghost of whoever lived her last.

Sure ghosts don’t look like him, as far as she knows at least, **_human_** ghosts don’t look like him. Humans aren’t pitch black with pale faces, they don’t have two mouths full of more teeth than they can count, they don’t have more joints along their limbs than she likes to think about, they don’t look like him. Chin Chin, or at least that’s what she calls him because he doesn’t say anything else.

She thinks about asking other people sometimes, if they notice anything different about her place when they come over now but no one does. She’s lived here four years, three full ones being haunted by Chin Chin and now in her last year, possibly, he disappears? She doesn’t know why but the timing is impeccable, as it always was.

Isabella sighs as she thinks about her missing ghost, she doesn’t really want to know what happened or where he went, she never had answers and she got used to that. All she really wants to know is what he was, maybe, and why her? She’s nothing special, really she’s not, she’s just a double major who likes to party too much and fuck a lot more. There are dozens of people like her, some of them even live in this building so why?

-Meet me downstairs?

-Need bananas

-Also need help finding bananas

Isabella snorts as the messages come through, one after the next and it’s so _Maxie_. The woman doesn’t know how to single text to save her life and it’s cute, it’s also a perfect translation of how she speaks which is cool. Isabella’s still trying to figure out if it’s because Maxie only got a phone a few months ago or because she’s just like that, might be a mix of the two.

-gimme 10 mins. Pls don’t break in again

She knows she actually has five minutes to pull on some decent clothes and get down to the lobby before Maxine breaks in. The woman knows how to break locks, all kinds of locks and the landlord’s getting pissed having to fix the door every other week and it might start to fuck up rent around here. Plus, she’d prefer to meet Maxie as far from her apartment as she can, she knows Maxie isn’t…like anyone else she’s ever known and she knows Maxie would be the one to figure out Chin Chin.

If anyone could, Maxine would and for some reason, Isabella doesn’t think it’ll end well. She barely knows anything about Maxine other than the ‘not from around here’ thing but she call feel it in her bones that Chin Chin wasn’t a good person. He never once hurt her, if anything he was nice, he’d help her around the apartment but she never thought for a second he was harmless. She doesn’t need the confirmation though, doesn’t want it because it’s just better to leave it be.

By the time she’s stepping into her shoes, Maxine’s sent her five snaps, all of them of the building’s front door with a countdown from ten and when the elevator doors open on the ground floor, Maxine is waiting. Isabella peeks at the door and notices the security lock is fine, no sparking, not missing, meaning Maxie slipped in after someone, again.

“If you make banana bread, I want to help,” she says before Maxie can say anything about how long she took and Isabella smiles when the woman scrunches her nose. Not because ‘Gwenny’ wants to help make bread but because Gwenny stopped her before she could tell her very elaborate story ie lie.

“I’m adding weed,” Maxie tells her as Isabella leads the way out the door and starts off down the street. She knows where the nearest supermarket is and it should sell bananas, if not there are the dozens of stalls around, one’s bound to have what they want. She grins when Maxie catches up and grabs her hand to stop her running ahead again, Isabella laces their fingers together and Maxine doesn’t stop her.

“Even better!” she answers with a smile and Maxine grins back at her. Gwenny might not know just what Maxine is or where she came from but she knows more than enough to know she wants to fuck her. Sure there’s the ‘used to be a bounty killer’ thing and the ‘I’ve killed people’ stuff but compared to Chin Chin, Maxine’s an angel.

“We’re going to introduce Franklin to edibles,” Maxine explains as they cross the street and her smile is so bright Isabella has to retract her previous thought. She doesn’t need to compare Maxine to Chin Chin for the woman to be an angel, she’s one just by existing.


	14. Mirrored Mirror Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frank likes to go walking at night-well no, Frank goes walking at night whether he likes it or not. He can't help himself, there's no real choice, what he does like though, is having someone to walk with. Someone who'll talk with him and fill up the empty hours until morning.

And they’re walking through Times Square in the middle of the night, the crowds are thinner but the lights are brighter. Frank wonders if his doppelganger has ever been to a place like this before, lit up and full of more life than either of them are used to, doubt they’ll ever get used to. New York of the future is so different from Osaka in the 40’s and there’s no other realm out there like this one, some come close but nothing’s as vibrant and filthy as New York.

Frank leads the way through the mess of people, the ones filtering in and out of the restaurants, the tourists, the ones who work here and out on their smoke breaks. He barely knows his way but Franklin trusts him and there’s the strangest twist in his gut when he thinks it. His doppelganger, Chin Chin’s servant who got treated so much worse than even Francis by that son of a cuck Peacelord trusts _him_.

Frank barely trusts himself most nights, when he’s wandering around his apartment and his neighbourhood and his city. When he can’t sleep because what if, what if, what if? Franklin trusts him though, doesn’t ask what he’s doing out alone so late, doesn’t ask where he’s going just falls in with him.

Franklin doesn’t trust easy, he’s wary and almost blank sometimes. He doesn’t let people touch him and he only talks about nonsense things, things that don’t relate back to whatever Chin Chin used to make him do. He barely even admits to knowing Maxine even though most everyone knows Mad Maxie and the terrible fucking things she’d do on Chin Chin’s command. Nope, Franklin doesn’t talk about any of it, he just talks around it all and the scientist in Frank wants to know if that’s something his doppelganger picked up or something that’s always been a part of him.

The scientist in him also wants to dissect his double, strip the flesh from his bones, test the dna, test the marrow, observe the organs, run the blood. The scientist in him has always been starving and now it’s ravenous, howling for sustenance but Frank was used to denying it now. How long has it been since he sat down and conducted an experiment? Set out his variables and gathered his instruments for something that didn’t rely on feelings or emotions, something he could lose himself in? Too long and not long enough.  

He slips between two tourists stealing their wallets off them as he goes and is half a block away before he realises Franklin isn’t trailing after him. Backtracking is simple, should be easy, he’s a Peacelord of the highest caliber and can do impossible things, his heart rate shouldn’t be doubling because he can’t find Franklin. Franklin who is a grown fucking man and survived much worse than being lost in New York without a chaperone.

Shoulds don’t make Frank’s heart behave and only finding Franklin squinting up at a billboard makes him feel any better. After that, he holds his double’s hand, no matter how stupid or childish it is and Franklin doesn’t complain in the slightest, even when Frank gets tired of holding his wrist and laces their fingers together instead. They get a few looks and someone mutters ‘faggots’ under their breath but Franklin steals their wallet off them and Frank lets it go. They’re just idiots who don’t know jack shit, he likes his Franklin, Franklin’s his friend and some weird version of him that exists because reasons.

They pick their way through Times Square, bathed in every colour Frank’s ever seen and then some. Neither of them say anything but they both know what the other is thinking about this place with it’s pretty lights and undercurrent of greed. They duck off down a side street before the second wave of tourists come through.

* * *

And they’re strolling through residential streets as the streetlights hum, they’ve left Times Square behind and they’re both more at ease already. Frank takes his time walking through the empty streets, they jaywalk back and forth so many times it’s a routine now, a crisscrossing pattern that barely makes any sense but neither do they so this makes perfect sense. Frank wants to laugh out loud, laugh until his throat aches and the sound is bouncing back and forth between the buildings. He wants to start some shit and maybe almost get arrested, he’s not sure, he feels free and trapped in his skin all at once.

“Chin Chin used to fuck me.”

Frank slips and falls against a tree, teeth clacking shut as his chin hits the bark. He doesn’t care though, that he has a bruise or that his teeth ache because what the fuck? What the fuck?! He thought, well he did, he thought about it and wondered and convinced himself he was just being too fucking morbid. He wasn’t though, Franklin just came right out and said it.

“It was good, liked it, his cock was nice,” Franklin continues, not looking back where Frank’s rubbing at the bruise and staring at him. He’s talking about this shit like it’s normal for something like Chin Chin to fuck you until you couldn’t stand, until you passed out, until you barely remembered any of it. Frank stares and stares hard, making each step deliberate as he trails after Franklin because if he didn’t, he’d step back into that realm where the pieces of Chin Chin were.

He’d step right back there and he’s bring the fucker back from the dead, drag him back to fucking life just so he could break him to pieces all over again. Frank wants to do it over and over and over, he wants to see sickly purple blood leaking out amongst the stars in the deep space of that realm. He wants to break every single one of Chin Chin’s bone, he wants to hear the sharp snap of bone and he the moist crack of gristle.

Frank wants to make Chin Chin bleed and break and beg and he wants to give him nothing but more pain, nothing but more pain. He wants to hear Chin Chin’s voice wavering and grating, scraping lower than the lowest circle of hell and he wants to hear it pitch up in a screech so high pitched it shatters weaker realms. Frank wants to make Chin Chin **_suffer_** worse than the poor bastards of the lowest tier and he doesn’t care if that makes him as bad or worse than the fucker, he’s a filthy fuck after all.

“He’d do this thing where he shoved his tongue down my throat, it was hard to breathe, sometimes I couldn’t,” Franklin shrugs and Frank’s listening, he doesn’t want to hear it but he’s listening. And he thinks he understands, Franklin talks around everything, prefers to talk around it and detach himself from it because it’s easier, Frank gets that. He does so he listens while Franklin tells him what it’s like to get fucked by a Dark God that it’s good, too good sometimes, feels like his body’s burning and crumbling to ash from how good it all feels.

Frank gets to hear what it’s like to be fucked by a cock that’s freezing cold, getting fucked up the ass by it and fucked down the throat by an impossibly long tongue. There aren’t…it doesn’t…Franklin doesn’t go into the sordid details, he’s not a poet but there’s a kind of haunting imagery to it all. Frank can see it so easy, someone that looks exactly like him, his double, being held down by the thing that made his life a hell for so long.

“I fucking hate him for leaving me and making me so dependent on him but I don’t hate him for the sex, you know?” Franklin asks and no, Frank doesn’t fucking know but he nods anyway. Franklin shrugs again, swings around a streetlight and waits for Frank to get close enough to hook their arms together.

“The sex was good at least, I could teach you some **_real_** filthy shit Frank,” Franklin snickers and Frank smiles, somethings are always the same and he’s fucking relieved his terrible sense of humous is something Franklin has too. He cares about shit but he’s shit at caring.

“Looking for an excuse to eat my ass?” he jokes, leading Franklin down another street, “cause I’d be down to fuck.”

* * *

 

And they’re waiting for their food at a restaurant while flicking straw wrappers at each other cause they’re fucking idiots who never grew up properly. Granted Frank grew up as a messiah and God and Franklin isn’t sure where he popped into existence one day or actually grew like a normal person. Maybe they’re making up for lost time then.

“What’s with the pink fucker?” Franklin asks as he chews on his straw and the pizza they ordered takes its sweet time to be made. Frank shrugs because eh it’s not something he thinks about much, he loves Pink Guy, he loves all of his friends, they’re his family and they mean the world to him. He had to watch some of them be murdered, had to bring some of them back from the dead, even tried to leave them to keep them safe.

He doesn’t know how much Chin Chin knew about them, sure he knew the superficial shit but he didn’t know how quick Frank would’ve tied his own noose if Chin Chin promised to spare his friends. No one does, not really, only Pink Guy, only Percy…and Franklin if he tells him.

“He’s my slam trophy,” Frank answers as seriously as he can and watches his own face contort into something between ew and understanding. Does he really look that constipated when he accepts some random shit?

“That’s a real fucking terrible joke,” Franklin groans and punches Frank in the arm maybe a little too hard but he just grins like the piece of shit he is. Most people don’t get his jokes, even Pink and Percy, Negi 4 seems to get it sometimes but then he’ll say something and Frank’ll realise he was just saying shit to fit in. He likes the guy no doubt but Negi 4 is a fucking dumbass sometimes, half the time…most of the time **_but_** he has his moments.

Like when Frank’s comes back from one of his walks and got locked out, Negi 4 lets him after the first knock and makes him a cup of coffee while he falls into a chair. Negi 4’s a good friend even if he’s not all there and Pink’s a good friend and Percy and Seamus and Saf and Centurion and Drone too. Frank loves his friends, the ones he picked up along the way and the ones that found their way to him like Maxine and Pinocchio and Franklin.

He’s glad Franklin found him, he can’t say why but he’s glad. He’s happy to have someone walking through the city with him, someone who maybe understands what Chin Chin was and why he can’t exactly hate him even now. Oh sure he hates the fucker for what he did to people he loved and himself but he can’t hate him all the way, even though he’d jump at the chance to make him suffer.

Frank can’t hate Chin Chin because the evil fucker taught him about the darkness in the world and showed him what he should never be. It’s complicated but Frank knows he’d better off letting go of the simmering hate or at least letting it boil over only once in a while so it doesn’t take up his whole life anymore. He’s getting better at the seven gifts even though he fucks up sometimes, he **_is_** getting better and he’s glad.

“ ** _You’re_** a terrible fucking joke,” he teases, grinning when Franklin slugs him in the arm again.

* * *

 

And they’re sharing a smoke on the bench waiting for the train to take them home because somehow they’re all the way across damn city and it’s almost dawn. Frank has two cigs left and they’re sharing to save it, or something like that, he forget what excuse they were using. They’re just blowing smoke in each other’s faces and talking about random shit they’ve done.

“Once I had to visit the ricefields, Chin Chin was looking for you I think,” Franklin says while Frank nods and takes a drag. He’s learnt a lot about Chin Chin via Franklin, the strange obsession the Peace lord had with him, the almost possessiveness. According to Franklin, Chin Chin didn’t want anyone else to kill him and every time the defeated another enemy and moved up a tier, Chin Chin would fuck Franklin.

He’s still fucked up about that, wants to make Chin Chin suffer for it but he can’t so he’ll let it go for now. Instead he wonders what Franklin thinks about his God, oh sure he hates the creepy fuck but at the same time, Chin Chin was never bad to him, never did anything to hurt his most prized servant. If anything, Franklin was treated like a pet, an expensive, pure bred pet who got nothing but the best which doesn’t seem so bad until he remembers Franklin doesn’t even have his own eyes.

He never had chromosomes, he only had Chin Chin gave him. He’s a rankenfile, they know that now, and he’s a pretty strong one but he was no match for the top tiered Peacelord. And he was a pet and a slave, anything Chin Chin wanted from him, he gave. Chin Chin wanted him to have different eyes, pitch black ones that let the dark lord see? Then alright, Franklin would gouge out his own and use the ones his lord wanted and Frank’s stomach flips thinking about it.

“The only people who knew shit was this weird guy in a shack, screaming about pigeons,” Franklin snorted and took the cig back. The shades he wears all the time had slipped down and Frank can see the gleam of blood red irises catching the light and throwing it back. Franklin only wears those shades because it’s easier to bled in with them, easier to pretend he’s not Chin Chin’s cast off creature and if he could, Frank would fix them. He’d switch them out in a heartbeat but he just doesn’t know how, not yet at least.

“Percy threatened that guy, said he’d shit on his house every day,” Frank explains as he watches his double’s lips wrap around the cig. He does that a lot, too much maybe, pay too much attention to the small details no one else ever would. He’s spent time wonder about all the shades of pink scattered across Pink Guy’s skin and the curl of Percy’s talons, the sheen of mucus on Salamander Man, even the sweep of Safari Man’s hair. And now he’s thinking about Franklin’s lips even though those are technically his lips too which is weird but not too weird.

“Yeah? Chin Chin was fucking pissed, we just missed you,” Franklin snorts and the smoke puffs between those pretty pink lips of his. Frank wonders if his double would mind being kissed right now, if it was him doing the kissing, maybe he might, maybe he might not. Frank knows the guy’s been watching Kohe for a while, the strange mortal guy with a few extra chromosomes who pals around with a chimpilla. Kohe’s nice, doesn’t talk much though and more than willing to cut a bitch if he had to.

“I’ll try to be slower next time so my arch enemy can kill me,” he offers with a laugh, leaning against the other man, pressing their legs together, shifting until they’re as close as they can be. Franklin doesn’t even bat an eyelash which is good, it’s cold in the hour before the morning and he likes the contact, it’s nice to touch without having to worry about anything. Franklin even holds the cig to his lips for him, smirking when Frank looks up at him and not even moving his hand as Frank takes a drag.  

“Thanks bro, you’re the best,” Franklin says so sarcastically Frank almost chokes laughing. His eyes water as the smoke in his lungs starts to burn and he coughs it up through his laughter but he doesn’t stop. Franklin pats him on the back as he doubles over, elbows on his knees as he laughs.

“Remind me never to make real jokes, I’ll just say stupid shit.”

And Frank loses himself in more laughter, shaking with it and god it feels good to laugh. It feels good to be with a friend and it feels good to be free. He likes being someone Franklin can trust and he likes being someone Franklin talks to, he likes his double plain and simple.

“You’re a fucking dumbass Francis,” Franklin snickers and Frank just keeps on laughing in the still cold before morning.


	15. Play the body electric

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kohe's got some good friends now and isn't that strange, he has friends now. Wow.

She plays the piano and he plays the violin, she’s intermediate and he’s a professional. He’s played for crowds of people in a concert hall, she’s played for school recitals and they go good together. When it all comes down to it, they’re the only two mortals in another realm, playing music at a bar for demons and devils and whiling away the time.

“Your silver skin that crawls in rhythm, sweats like spring, returns me to the deathwish,” she sings, voice low and sweet as she sways with her music. He closes his eyes as his fingers glide along the strings and he drags the bow, rocking in time with her and breathing slow and deep. They’re a good pair, they can match each other and they can keep up with each other, slow down if they need to.

Kohe likes her, she’s nice and she doesn’t take any shit, plus it’s nice to know someone else as confused by all this as he is. She used to be visited by a Dark God, he grew a few too many chromosomes; she knows the wrong people and refuses to forget them, he likes the wrong people and he’s not going to abandon them. Like he said, they’re a good pair.

“And all my epiphanies that branded me and broke my knees confirms me into the deathwish,” she croons, letting her head fall forward as her fingers follow muscle memory. She knows this song, it’s as easy as breathing for her now, and she barely even needs to look down as her fingers tap it out. Her hair brushes her cheek, some of it falling out of the fancy up-do she did and he wants to reach over and tuck it behind her ear again but he’s still playing for her.

Yeah **_for_** her. He doesn’t play for many people anymore, not after he got involved with the wrong people and had to run for his life. Now he plays for Isabella and Maxine and Franklin, they **_ask_** him, they don’t demand, they don’t force him, they just ask and he can say no if he wants to. They give him the option to back out and he loves them for it, each of them. He loves them in different ways of course, he loves them the way he loves his instruments.

Bella’s his violin, he loved her first and the most complicatedly, he didn’t want to make friends in this new city and he didn’t want to love some strange purple girl but he does. Bella is the one who pushes him, who takes him out of his comfort zone but is there, always there, and he loves her for it. Maxie is his piano, slower to love than Bella but simpler to fall for, she just pushed her way into his life whether he wanted her or not. He guesses it’s a good thing he wanted her, she’s easy to love too, when he lets himself relax and take his time.

“Are we machines? Obsolete, alone, in symbiotic self-indulgence?” Isabella moans, words buzzing on her lips. Kohe drags his bow on the string, makes his violin screech for him to match her song because this is very much _her_ song. The audience around them murmur appreciatively but mostly go back to ignoring them, treating them as background noise which is what they’re supposed to be.

Bella is his violin, Maxie is his piano and Franklin, hmm Franklin is his electric bass, yeah his bass. Franklin’s new and he’s strange but there’s enough familiarity to feel comfortable and he’s still learning. He never expected someone like Franklin in his life but he can’t imagine him leaving now; Franklin showed up and Kohe’s learning to live a new life. Franklin’s the easiest to love, the one that came after all the worst bits and piece and now he’s comfortable with what he has.

“Are we pretending?” she murmurs and the only reason the bar can hear her is because of the mic clipped to her collar. Isabella isn’t singing for them now though, if she could look up at him, he’d see the look in her eyes telling him she’s singing for him. Kohe smiles as he plays for her and his smile barely dips as he reaches for the far notes, it’s getting easier to play and soon he’ll be able to play the complicated pieces his tutors beat into his head years ago, fucking years ago, fuck.

His smile flattens out and he looks out across the room instead, at the patrons with their horns or their tails or their wings or their claws or whatever other inhuman piece they’ve got. People are drinking at the bar, slamming back shots because the night is young and they want to get smashed. Some are in the booths, laughing or snarling, both even; there are only a few looking up at the stage tucked into the back corner and out of the way.

He likes coming to these places because they help him forget, they’re so different to the concert halls and mirrored practice rooms. He’s in a sleazy bar, dressed in jeans and a hoody with his hair in his face because he forgot to get a haircut this month. He’s so far from the polished, pristine violinist he used to be he doesn’t think anyone he knew would even recognise him anymore and that’s good because he doesn’t want to recognise himself.

“Are _we_ pretending,” Isabella hums and Kohe forgets that, he forgets to feel bitter about all that and just plays for her. He asked her to come play with him, all the way in another realm and she said yes so now he’ll play her song with her and he’ll enjoy himself. He’s reteaching himself one bit at a time, relearning all the notes and creating new fingering patterns and finding new ways to hold his bow. His tutors would have a fit if they saw him now and he smirks at the thought, he’d be glad.

“Cause I like pretending,” he mumbles, following the last few chords until they’re done. All done. He lets his bow fall and he looks up at his audience who barely notice the song finishing, one or two people clap and a few nod at them. Bella smacks his leg and he takes a bow for both of them while she stretches her fingers and cracks her knuckles.

He holds out a hand for her and she takes it as soon as she’s done. They’re done here, they promised the owner three songs and this was the third, they’re finished for the night and now they’re off to another realm. Any realm, every realm, doesn’t matter so long as they’re moving.


	16. I wanna know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's a Lemon named Linden and his life isn't so special but he's still important.

Linden wasn’t stupid, no matter what everyone wanted to say. He wasn’t dumb, he just, his head just hurt real bad sometimes and he couldn’t help not being able to talk like everybody else. The Balderdashes didn’t like talking to him and most of the cuadatas would shoo him away, no one wanted a Lemon around. No one even gave him a chance to be helpful, and he could be!

“I’m a Lemon,” he grumbled as he waded through a murky part of the swamp. This realm wasn’t safe exactly but it wasn’t dangerous either and no one really lived here so no one could chase him away. He could live here for a while, find a nice patch of sun to roll around in and maybe after he could start looking again. For a family, start looking for a family, or a place to stay, somewhere with people.

He missed people, he really did. He missed not having to worry about chimps chasing him down and he missed just being able to stretch out in a nice sun patch. He missed his family but they didn’t want him anymore which meant he shouldn’t want them either but he did. He would stop exploring if it meant they’d let him come home, Linden would squeeze himself dry if it meant he’d have a family again.

How was he supposed to know travelling was bad? No one ever talked about it, no one ever said ‘Don’t go to other realms’ or ‘you know it’s dangerous out there’. No one did that, not a single Lemon ever did, they just sat around in the sunlight or tended to the animals or wandered around their own realm. No one cared what was out there, all the cool, incredible things and people and animals, they didn’t _want_ to know.

All of them would choose getting squeezed over leaving the comfort of their homes but not Linden, how could he? When he could travel and move and learn so much about so many places? In a way, he was glad he got kicked out because now he knew all kinds of things and so many people. At the same time though, he really really wanted to go home and forget about everything else.

“I’m a Lemon,” he sighed, plopping down at the base of a strange tree. This wasn’t like a lemon tree, it had different leaves and huge roots, like the ones down by the water only this one wasn’t, weird. Linden would spend the day here, maybe two days, however long it took to get back his chromies at least and then he’d leave. He’d leave for sure, find some place with people who didn’t care about his language and who didn’t think he was dumb.

The set was just about ready to set as he dozed off, listening to a bunch of weird birds and croaky things. Linden only meant to stop there a little while, just a little while, nothing more.

* * *

Meeting Seamus was an accident, he didn’t mean to crash into the Salamander but he was running from a big scorpion and not looking where he was going. Both of them slipped and both of them ended up in the murky water of the swamp, rolling around and shoving at each other. Linden almost forgot the scorpion behind him until it crashed through the trees too and screeched at him, then he was on his feet again and dragging the Salamander with him.

They ran and ran and ran, scrambling up a tree when they found one good for climbing. The Salamander stuck out his tongue while they both panted and Linden screwed up his face, he didn’t know Salamanders came out here.

“I’m a Lemon,” he said.

“Nyess!” the Salamander said.

And they were friends, kind of, eh. Linden wasn’t exactly sure if they were friends or just people who knew each other, he wasn’t even sure if they understood what each other was saying half the time. Seamus only spoke Salamander, and some general Caudata, Linden couldn’t say anything but I’m a Lemon, they managed, mostly.

When the weird man drops into his realm, Linden attacks because that’s what you do when strange people show up in your home. Seamus drags him off the guy and they fight for a little bit before Linden runs off, promising to fuck up Seamus for this because what the hell? He knows Seamus probably didn’t mean it, he’s a really nice guy, he likes helping people and maybe he did go a little overboard. Linden will apologise when he finds the Salamander again, later, right now he’s hungry and the sun’s coming out.

* * *

So there’s no later. Somehow. Seamus disappears and the realm starts to die, somehow. Linden doesn’t know what’s going on but he leaves when the trees start to go, he’s a plant, if the big trees can’t survive here then neither can he. Besides, it’s about time he leave so he does.

He feels a little bad about not getting to see Seamus again but maybe he went with that guy. He isn’t sure but he really hopes Seamus got away before all this went to shit, they were friends after all, still are? He hopes.

The next few realms he finds are just as bad as the one he left. The plants are dying and the animals are real nasty, they just wanna fight and fight and fight until they’re dead. Linden doesn’t stop in any of them, he’s tired and he’s hungry but he keeps going, he learns something from each realm he’s in though so at least there’s that. At least he learns Seamus is alive and running around with someone named Frank, maybe the same weirdo who dropped in on their realm.

He travels further and he finds out Seamus was in a fight with a bunch of Negis, they call it a war and Linden wonders what that was like. He never thought his Salamander friend was a fighter, not really, but he guesses he was wrong and that’s good. He’s glad Seamus learned some moves, at least next time they meet they’ll be able to have a real fight. The thought of meeting his friend again helps him get through another realm and the thought of winning the fight gets him across a river.

When he finally finds a place that doesn’t look shitty, Linden’s exhausted and he’s ready to sleep for a bunch of days. He can’t sleep out in the open though, specially when he spots a bird high high up, circling maybe, waiting to come down and gobble him up maybe. He sniffs and grumbles as he climbs a hill, he wants to make tree cover before he collapses for good but all he finds is an old hut.

“I’m a Lemon?” he asks as he steps up to the hut, looking around and wondering if it’s abandoned. When the old…thing walks out, he nearly runs off but he doesn’t, mostly cuase he can’t run no more. He’ll sleep under the hut if he has to, if the thing will let him.

“I’m a Lemon,” he begs and he puts every ounce of tiredness in his voice, hoping the old dead looking thing understands him. He just wants to sleep under the house, out of danger of the bird, he’ll be real good and not make noise, he just needs a few hours.

The old dead thing looks him up and down with no eyes in its head and nods, Linden’s about to drop right there but the old dead thing crooks a finger and goes back inside the house. Linden almost leaves then and there cause this can’t be safe, no one’s ever asked him into their house before, no one outside of his home realm at least. But he can’t make it back down the hill so he climbs the rickety old stairs and makes it into the hut proper.

He has no idea what to think when he spots the cushions and the blanket on the floor and he’s even more confused when the old dead thing points at him then the pile on the floor. He stares and the old dead thing does it again until he takes a step towards it, the dead thing doesn’t move until he’s sitting on the pillows and Linden watches it leave the room. He stares for a while, blinking hard and wondering what’s going on before he stretches out and curls up under one of the blankets.

He’ll repay the old dead thing later, when he wakes up. Maybe he’ll even find a place to stay in this realm, that’d be nice, it seems like a good place.


	17. Can't Drown My Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They know how to run a restaurant and bar

He…isn’t a Peacelord, he doesn’t belong to these tiers or these realms and if he’s being real specific he doesn’t belong to this omniverse. So what’s he doing here? Raising hell? Taking control? Conquering and sinning until he collapses in a puddle of his own vomit? None of the above, well maybe the last one but he’s getting better at holding his liquor.

“Come back any time kids,” he offers genially, smiling at the pair in front of him. Mortal kids, pretty mortal kids who could play the pants off the Devil himself. Or they would if they ever had eyes for anyone but each other, shame, Red’d love to get those two in his bed, give em a taste of the second circle? But they don’t want him so he lets them go, Isabella and Kohe, they’re good kids and they always make him a pretty penny whenever they play in his bar.

They always make googly eyes at each other too which is cute in sappy way, young love, he loves it. Red loves love, he knows all the ways to use, twist, manipulate it, bop it! Ha he’s good at what he does and what does is drag all the little sinners off into his own omniverse where there are no tiers, only tears. Well, actually, only circles but same shit, and he’s one of the fuckers who can move through the circles as pretty as he pleases.

Red leans back in his chair and breathes deep, it’s good to be top dog. He can sneak around as he pleases, rule Hell if he likes or just have a shitty lil bar in some no-name realm if he wants, it’s great.

“Where the fuck you been?”

Shit.

“Just taking in the sights,” he lies easily, glancing at his hell hound lazily, spreading his legs wide behind his desk and patting a thigh. There’s a fifty-fifty chance dear ole Theodore’ll take the bait and if he does, then that’s great, if not then boo. Red’s hoping for the former of course but when Theo crosses his arms, skinning back his teeth to show off those sparkly gold canines, he knows it’s the latter. Boo.

“You can’t just up and leave fucker, our realms are going to shit,” Theo snarls and he does mean snarl. Red smiles at his hell hound, his mutt of a servant who he wouldn’t change for the world. Chin Chin had his Franklin but Red has his Theodore, treats him better too because he ain’t a cunt, he’s a fucker and a bastard and the actual Devil but he’s good to his people. He can’t afford to live any other way, Theodore’s a mean bitch, if Red tried half the shit CC did with his lil pet, he would’ve had to regrow a dick.

“What’s a little vacation? You can hold it together, I trained you good,” Red adds, a sly little compliment that has Theo relaxing ever so slightly. Red loves his hell hound, easy to rile up but just as easy to calm down, he’s a good dog and he just wants his master to make good choices every so often. Theo’d do good under another Devil, one who didn’t get nicknamed after some noodles just cause he liked to slurp up guts like them. It was just one time, and he didn’t even like Ramen all that much.

Mmm yeah, Theo’d do good under a Devil who had the time to train him up. One who wasn’t always skipping away to other omniverses and leaving his realms to do whatever the fuck they wanted. One who didn’t leave him to find his own way across and through and however the hell Theo actually found him half the time. Yeah, Theodore sure would do good as someone else’s lapdog but he was _Red’s_ , and no one else was allowed to have him, and if anyone tried to steal him then he’d _gut_ them.

Theodore was _his_ hell hound, _his_ good little gatekeeper, **_his_** vicious attack dog who’d rip any one and any thing to shreds for his Master. He was the best servant Red’d ever had and he planned on keeping him around for a long time, stewing in the fourth circle or moaning away in the second, it didn’t matter so long as he was by Red’s side as he did it.

“Next time I’ll just let Bhairava take Oneirocosm and not come get you,” Theo threatened, though it was more teasing because he was smiling and he’d never let anyone take that realm. They both liked that one too much and Theodore was just as territorial as his master, great quality to have in a guard dog, he highly recommended encouraging it.

“You’re gonna get me from all the way over there?” Red teased good and proper, patting his thigh again and this time Theo takes the cue. He shoves the desk out of the way and climbs into Red’s lap, nosing at the pocket with the coke in it before he presses his face against his Master’s collar bone and breathing deep. Red knows Theo’s actually marking him, getting rid of any other scents clinging to his skin but he always thinks it’s kinda cute, he’s _property_.

He doesn’t mind, he lets Theo scent mark him while he settles back into his chair. They’re just a pair of demons in a strange omniverse, strangers in a strange land, they could do worse than their bar even though Theo still refuses to accept it as his. Verbally at least, Red’s seen him prowling the dark corners and making the smallest changes around the place, it’s only a matter of time now.

For now though, Red starts thinking up ways to fuck with Bhairava for daring to encroach on his territory. The guy’s powerful but he’s nowhere near Red’s level even though he’s been trying for the last million chromosomes give or take a millennium. His servants aren’t as good as Red’s and his realms aren’t as powerful and Red understands, really he does, he remembers what it was like fighting and fucking his way to the top.  

He can emphatise, he’s not a heartless bastard but he’s not giving out charity and he’ll rip the heart from a fucker’s chest if he has to, or even if he wants to.

“I’ll bite off your dick if you run off again,” Theo growls against his skin.

“That a promise?” he snickers until the knee jammed in his stomach makes him laugh.


	18. A Taste of Decadence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or maybe a scent of blasphemy. Does it matter when you're a Dark God?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Heavy Gore and shout out to slitheringupmybpd for the inspiration for this chapter.

So this is it, this is him, an imperfect carbon copy. What did I expect, what did I want? I know what I wanted, I wanted a toy to play with, I wanted a toy to break and toss aside when I was  bored. I know what I expected, a devout servant just as good as Pinocchio who was grateful to me and who worshiped the ground I walked on.

What did I get, what didn’t I? Well hmm, I got something close, very, sweetly close and I got something so far from the original it was almost sacrilegious. You understand why I kept him, don’t you? An effigy and mockery of my enemy? Something to use and abuse however I wanted without a single check or balance against me? I would’ve been a fool to cast him aside but I should have, I shouldn’t have let my excitement get the better of me.

A fool to keep him and a fool to leave him, I suppose I was destined to be a fool either way. So far as Francis was concerned, even here, especially here, I was always the fool between us. Even though I knew more than him, even though I was more powerful at the start, even though I had every reason to slit his throat and fuck the hole, I didn’t. I let him live and I let him escape and I let him grow because I was a fool.

Maybe this was predetermination in action? Maybe, maybe.

“ _Ochin chin_ ,” I mumble and a wind rips through the crumbling temple, my crumbling temple. Franklin stumbles in with the wind and I see him as a blot of light in the darkness, through all the shades of shadow, he is a grey smear against it all, piercing white with the contrast even though he’s nothing close to the supernova flare of the original.

I know he sees me as the negative space between stars, as something dead, rotting and cursed. Such a strange ability to have, one he doesn’t even realise is rare and coveted and people would tear the eyes from his skull for. I already have his eyes, the old ones he stabbed out of his face in a gush of blood and cold animal pain. Watching the smear of grey flood with rusted blood was fun and I laughed, because of his pain and in mockery of it.

He never cried, never screamed, even as he plucked the orbs off the ground and presented them to me. All he did was stare blindly and blank into the darkness while I laughed long and loud into the night. What a good boy, doing exactly what I asked without once questioning me, mutilating himself and killing himself and damning himself to a creator he shouldn’t believe in. Tasting the blood mixed with his tears, it was more sublime than any wine whiling away the time until it was sweetest.

Tasting Franklin’s pain, feeling it in his jerky movement, hearing it in the creak of bones and breath stuck in his chest, it was euphoric. Even if it was a pale imitation of what I really wanted, as close to what I wanted as Franklin was to Francis which was to say, not close at all. I can make do though, I can use him to stave off my hunger until I have the one I want.

“She got in a fight, someone tried to start shit with her again,” Franklin reports and Chin Chin snorts. Of course she did, when didn’t his girl go around starting fights? His unknowing mortal girl who had nothing better to do than bloody her knuckles and scream her throat raw. The mortal girl who’d screamed at Francis when he popped up in her realm, rude and crass as he ever was.

Listening to her send Francis away was as satisfying as hearing the man rant and rave, gripped in the throes of insanity, clinging to the slivers of his mind with broken fingers. All the filth spewing from his lips, the intelligence leaking out of his brain, it was amusing and hilarious and was down-right beautiful. His great and destined enemy, reduced to a blithering idiot by nothing more than the miasma of a realm, a realm his girl survived in without qualm.

“ _Dai suki_?” I ask flicking my wrist and he climbs into my lap easily, nothing but a trained dog, beautiful. I flick my fingers again and the wind that tears through the broken temple rips the glasses from his face and drags though his hair, makes him grab me to stay where he is instead of flying off into the deep sky above. I don’t bother with him, he’s a strong boy, he can hold his own and really I want what he brought with him.

The rankenfile is a quivering, shivering pile of flesh, covered in its own blood and stinking of its own excrement it makes for a pitiful creature worthy of nothing but torment. Torment I’ll gladly give, Franklin laid out my tools so lovingly before he left after all and it would be a shame not to use them. Before that though, before that I need to know why this useless sack of shit thought it was be a good fucking idea to touch my girl, to harass her and try to hurt her and leave her with a bloody nose and black eye.

“ _O Chin Chin_?”

“How did you find her?” Franklin translates and I settle a hand on his thigh, shift him slightly so he sits across my lap, head tucked just beneath my mouth. For most, he is my translator, for this one, he is my judge and I will play executioner for him. It’s strange to think how attached he’s grown to my girl, how willing he was to go hunt down a rankenfile so much more powerful than him. Though he barely knows about the tiers much less that he’s a mid-class rankenfile himself, so maybe it wasn’t courage but stupidity, I’d ask if I cared to.

“ _Ochin Chin ga dai suki dayo_?”

“Why did you touch her? You thought she’d be easy pickings?”

The rankenfile writhes on the ground, panting behind the old sock stuffed in its mouth while it works hard not to bleed out on my floor. If only it knew the actual faith I have plotted out for it, the predetermination of its torture would it care so much about living through this?

Hmm, maybe, maybe not. Franklin huffs against me and I raise a hand to his hair, smooth it down and pet him, soothing him. He’s so easy to rile up and this won’t be anywhere near as fun if he hauls off and beats this fucking twit to death, I’d much rather he help me in my dissection.

“ _Ga dai suki dayo? Ochin Chin_?”

“You thought it wouldn’t get back to me? You cocksucking son of a bitch, you thought you could touch my girl?”

I spit the words but Franklin snarls them, skins back his lips and flashes his teeth at the bound, gagged and condemned fucker on the floor. I can feel the rage in locking his muscles, can almost taste it thick and salty at the back of my throat the same as his cum, and my tongue snakes out before I realise it. I’m licking the blood from his lips and the sweat from his neck while he shudders and growls against me and it’s a lovely combination, a raw, primal mixture so potent I half wonder if Francis is the same way.

If I stand opposite him, my teeth ripping into one of his beloved brothers? If I tear into their stomach and spill their guts out between us, if I burn them to death in front of him, would he react as viscerally? Would he taste as good with his fury burning through his blood and his chromosomes electric in their willingness to be used.

What would happen if I had Francis here? So close, close enough to bite and tear and kill? What would he do to live? What would he do to save his friends? What would he let me do and how much could he survive?

“ _Dayo_.”

“Answer me and maybe I’ll kill you quick.”

A lie, and each of us knows it. This little pest doesn’t get the curtsy of a pesticide, nothing that will kill quick, not fire, not poison. This one will get toxins working through its veins until it begs to die, this one will have it’s ribs broken open so its shriveled heart beats in the open air for me. Then, I’ll stitch him back together, have my Franklin thread my needle and slip it through flesh and bone and muscle, in and out, through and through until the thread runs short and the fighting stops.

We’ll do that, over and over and over and over until it’s tedious and boring and banal and dreary and until I don’t care anymore. Franklin will help me until his fingers bleed from threading steel thread to a metal needle and his eyes grow heavy and burn. He will help me until I see him as a person separate from Francis for a few scant minutes, long enough to snatch him up and snatch the breath from his lungs and swallow every grating moan he makes.

For now though, until then though.

“ _Ochin chin_.”

“You have thirty seconds.”


	19. Let me show you, stranger like me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A simple trip across realm with a new friend. Ha ha, wonderful!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanted to take a crack at how George writes and his narrative style. Hope it worked out okay.

They’ve got things in common, these two. Safari Man knows what it’s like to be a Dark God’s whipping boy and Franklin pretends it was better than it was, it helps him cope. They see things others don’t; Safari Man can see the truth of situations and the people in them, Franklin sees straight through to the image of a soul. They like to adventure, in their ways, and they’ve both betrayed people they never thought they could. Though Safari’s was of fear and Franklins was unintentional, they can find common ground in their pains.

It doesn’t come as much of a shock when the two of them disappear together one day, no one quite knows where and no one quite cares either. Which is good, Saf would hate for anyone to worry, they’re just going to an alternate Japan after all and that’s safe enough. Even though the yakuza there can be difficult, especially since they know what a rankenfile looks like, but Saf is confident in his ability to navigate the realm.

He’s also confident in his ability to fill the silence when Franklin won’t. He doesn’t mind, he understands, really he does. Franklin was never encouraged to speak his own words, he was a mouthpiece for Chin Chin for quite a while there even though Saf never saw the man before the day he collapsed on their couch. He understands so he fills up the quiet on his own instead, he’s always had a gift for telling stories even if his audience didn’t want them.

He suspected he might have a touch of Balderdash in his family tree though he couldn’t say from which side, not that he’d put in the work of looking. Oh no, it was just more exciting that way, people were interested in it, granted they knew what a Balderdash was of course. If they didn’t then he would switch to something they did know and keep going until he needed a drink or a bite to eat.

“Of course I couldn’t let her try, with teeth like that? Ha ha no way!” he laughed, loud enough to echo between the walls of this narrow alley he swears is a short cut, though to _where_ , he wasn’t quite sure. They were in this alternate Japan’s Osaka and yet, Saf had clear idea where he was, or any clear idea where he wanted to go. He was walking for walking’s sake with his new friend next to him; a friend who didn’t care if he was in the Negi War or not and who did care about the horrors he’d seen.

A friend who didn’t speak much but when he did was delightfully crass and philosophical. Such an eclectic combination but he wasn’t one to point out the strange and unbelievable, he lived with it every day. If he pointed it out every time he saw it, he wouldn’t ever stop and there were so many better things to do with the day.

“Wouldn’t you say Franklin?” he asked as they carefully picked their way through the garbage spilled by an overflowing dumpster. He pinched his nose shut and kept going, even though he could barely see his feet in the darkness of the night and was pretty sure there were rats here. Ah well at least he was wearing shoes this time, he remembered the last time he was forced to wade through refuse and how uncomfortable it had been without shoes.

“A banana peel right between my toes, I tell you,” he told Franklin as they crept along and he didn’t even have to turn to know Franklin was actually listening. He didn’t block out what Safari said, he listened and nodded along in the right places, ooh-ed and ahh-ed as he was expected. It felt nice to haven audience again, one who appreciated his skills and tales without calling bullshit on all of them as Francis was wont to do.

“of course, I love him like a brother but some family you want to strangle, ha ha!” he only half joked and caught the edge of Franklin’s smile as they finally emerged into the light of the new street, smelling of sewage even though they’d barely touched any garbage. Safari Man chalked it up to the strangeness of this realm and kept moving, he was sure whatever they’d come for was only a few steps away.

“Now if you asked me about takoyaki, I would tell you the best to be found were in the Osaka of my youth. The balls were huge!” he promised, nearly breaking down into hysterical laughter at the expression of a passerby. Ah how he’d missed his hometown, no matter the realm, no matter the people, Japan would always be Japan and Safari Man loved coming home to it. He missed it when he was off on his adventures and he missed it when he realized no one but Francis knew what he was talking about.

“And you know, he lived in Okinawa, which is fine, but it’s nothing like Osaka. As you’ll soon see,” he promised as he dragged Franklin along on his quest for whatever they’d come here for. Again, he had absolutely no idea what they’d come here for but he knew he would know it when he saw it.

He was positive.

“I’m positive, 99.99% sure.”


	20. He's my friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And that's all the reason he needs to keep looking.

Salamander Man goes looking, Safari Man goes drinking, Alpha Centurion asks around, Drone flies through town. Pink Guy…he looks for Frank differently, he doesn’t search the realms he thinks Frank would be in because he doesn’t know what realms the Dark Lord would have sent his friend to. Instead Pink Guy sends things out, little things for Frank to find somewhere out there in the omniverse.

He started with notes in New York, found people who wanted to take pictures with him and slipped the pieces of paper into their bags when they weren’t looking. He made a lot of money that way and sent out a lot of notes, at least one would leave this realm and make it to another one, just one, maybe?

Safari Man called it reverse stealing, Seamus said it was lying, Freygarður didn’t give two fucks what it was. He just wanted Frank back, he wanted his friend back, he…he just wanted him back.

If he was being truthful with himself, Freygarður wasn’t supposed to be alive. He was destined to die on the outskirts of the omniverse, it was predetermined a long, long time ago, and he’d gone against the natural order to leave with Frank and every second he lived was a greater aberration. He was a dead man walking and the omniverse knew it, it wouldn’t try to forcefully kill him but it would remember.

And why? Why had he done it?

Because he loved Frank.

For as long as he knew himself Freygarður had loved the strange boy in his dreams, the one with the beautiful black hair and woefully black heart. He’d dreamt of a man in a filthy shirt working to save his country, to save his people, to save himself from the rot eating away at his soul. Pink Guy had pitied the man and the boy, knowing somehow they were one in the same, he’d pitied them and he’d loved them.

When the day came to travel across the realms, when he felt the tug in his own soul to go, go, move now! **_Run_**! He’d fallen over his own feet as he sprinted through the realms, ducking through weak points and barrelling through barriers. He’d snatched at his chromosomes as he used them, desperate for just a little more from them, needing just a little more. He’d flayed his hands open on rusty bits of metal, he’d kept them bleeding with bits of glass, flinging his blood in circles as he travelled in short bursts.

Because he was strong, he was a high ranked rankenfile but it took a lot of energy to get to the place Frank was. And thinking about it, knowing that Frank go where he was in a single jump without even knowing what he was doing, it was terrifying. How strong was his friend?

“Not strong enough, not yet,” he mutters under his breath as he trudges along the road. He can speak in this realm, in his real voice, and he’s glad. He needs a voice here, as Pink Omega he needs a voice to make trades and barter, he needs a voice to sell his mix tape. It was Alpha Centurion’s idea, sending out chromosome scraps via song and seeing if any of them made their way to Frank.

Sure it was stupid, they had no way of knowing who would pick up on the hidden messages behind his songs but it was worth a try. Anything was worth a try if it meant he could get Frank back, he was willing to go on another mad dash across dimensions and time if it meant finding Frank at the end of it again. Even if it meant actually dying this time after spending an eternity begging for the slow death to end, he’d been ready then and he’s still ready now.

Freygarður doesn’t even know why. He has no idea why he loves this man so much, dreams and visions aside, there’s no reason for him to even like Frank. He’s a filthy, rude, disgusting fucker who melted flesh for peace and tortured animals for fun and no matter the circumstances, there was no excuse for half of what he said.

Pink can still remember that day, the day before Frank won his chromosomes. The wildness in his eyes, the mania jangling through his bones, he knows the only reason Frank didn’t turn on them was because he’d locked himself in the room. Then he’d ranted and raved and screamed about thinks Pink had never heard of before, things that might have never existed, maybe things from the past, maybe things from the future. He never knew, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get the chance to know now.

“You will, he’s alive,” he muttered under his breath, readjusting his backpack full of mixtapes and climbing over a fallen tree in the middle of the damn road. He hated these out of the way realms, no one cared about them and shit went to shit real fast around here. Case in point, the pothole that’d taken out part of the road and meant he had to take a detour off into the bush at the side of the road.

“Fuck this realm,” he grumbled as he stepped into a patch of mud. All for Frank, anything for Frank but he was allowed to complain along the way right? So long as he was still moving, still getting where he needed to go and looking for who he wanted to find, it was okay, right?


	21. Corruption and Corrosion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eating away at your soul and your sanity, wearing you down and killing you slowly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [CaptainMaxi00's AU](https://captainmaxi00.tumblr.com/)

He's a disease, a fucking parasite crawling into hearts and clawing his way back out, breaking ribs and slashing at muscle and organs until you’re a bloody carcass. He’s a poison in the glass of a King, waiting for the fall of a monarch until he swoops in like a vulture to pick the meat from the bone. He’s a God and a Scavenger, he has his own power and he seeks it out, he takes it when he can and steals it when he cannot.

He’s no Sky Father though, he’s no raging God of war, no Underworld King, he’s not even the spritely messenger who knows who and what and where and how. He is the Trickster. He is the one who steals fire from the Gods and burns humanity with it because no one can have it but he doesn’t want to keep it either. He’s the one to snatch the crown of heaven and lose it in the muck and mud of his own corruption.

He is an evil, manipulative **_wretch_**.

A coward hiding under the veneer of a deity as he steals into the dreams of people he already torments in waking life so why not follow them into their subconscious respite? Why not show them why they should fear him, always fear him, even when he’s nowhere near them?

* * *

 

He can’t see. Lost in darkness and pain. Blood blooming across his eyes, eyes he can’t open. It’s pretty though, beautiful even, the burst of angry red in the perpetual darkness.

He can’t speak. Lips shut, tongue cut out. He can taste the blood swimming in his mouth and it makes him want to retch but he can’t. He can’t open his mouth to spit out the mouthful of blood choking him.

Eyes sewn shut, mouth sewn closed. He’s blind and mute now, might as well be deaf and left to suffer in quiet, detached pain for the rest of his life. There’s nothing he can do, nothing to save himself or beg for help, he can’t even beg for mercy. All he can do is sit in silence and cry his bloody tears until his heart gives out from the blood loss.

Or he could, if he was awake. Somehow he knows he isn’t and it should comfort him right? Knowing he’s **_only_** sleeping, knowing this is **_just_** a nightmare, knowing that all he has to do is open his eyes for real and he’ll be okay. It should be comforting, it’s just carrion comfort though because Shun knows, he knows the second he shuts his eyes again he’s back here.

Back in the hell of his dreams, stuck in this neverending cycle of torment and exhaustion. Even now, kneeling with his face buried in his hands and weeping, sobbing so silently but so hard his whole body shakes. Even now it doesn’t matter because knowing doesn’t help him, it makes it worse because this is just a _taste_ of what could come.

This is a look into the punishments that await and he’s terrified of what worst’s to come.

* * *

 

When Frank wakes up in a cold sweat to a racing heart and trembling body, he expects it’s because of a night terror. When his friends ask he tells them it’s just a bad dream and they don’t ask anything more, they’ve all had bad dreams, they’re all _having_ bad dreams. The Dark Lord is an ever present threat and it’s logical to think the fear they all push down so deep would float to the top when they’re asleep and vulnerable to the machinations of their subconscious.

Frank tells his friends he has bad dreams and Frank _lies_.

He wishes they were bad, he wanted them to be horrifying and heart stopping. He wanted to have some dreaded nightmare thing to describe when someone asked why he was screaming in his sleep. He wanted to tell the truth but he can’t. He can’t ever tell them.

How would he even start? How was he supposed to describe the grotesque pleasure of seeing through eyes meant for predator instead of a man. How was he supposed to put into words the perverse joy of ripping into something with teeth he shouldn’t have and letting the blood of something innocent wash his mouth with it’s hot sweetness?

Dreams of murder was nothing new to any of them, finding pleasure in it even less so but dreams where you were your own immortal enemy’s dutiful servant? Dreams where he feels the raw happiness of being able to serve his lord perfectly and precisely with the teeth he was given, with the eyes, with the horns. Dreams where he isn’t a hunted foe and is a well loved servant instead.

How does he tell them the screaming isn’t because he doesn’t want it, the screaming and the panic is because of how much he _does_.

* * *

 

The strangest part of the dreams are the way he can never judge distance. And it’s never because it’s “just a dream” where thinks make no sense and chaos is the order of the day. No, for Freygarður the misjudgements are a simple matter of depth perception and the simple matter of depth perception is because of the eye.

He could say missing, because it is, in these dreams his eye is always inexplicably missing. Sometimes the dream catches him part way through the extraction, when there’s nothing but cold stabbing pain burning along his nerves and frying them as it goes. Sometimes he’s just _like that_ and forced to live a life with it, with some foreign thing prickling along his face, prodding at his brain and whispering in his thoughts.

And Freygarður doesn’t know what scares him more in those ‘dreams’, the thought of having something put inside of him or having something come out of him. Because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if the creature, the mutilated, twisting thing is a part of him or some parasite digging deeper and deeper into his body. He doesn’t know if it’s a punishment or a prediction or a simple fact.

Is it what he really is? Underneath his pretty pink flesh, is he some sick, broken creature clinging to whatever life he can? Did he ever leave that broken realm with Frank? Did he leave the Wretched or has he joined them? Will he?

He doesn’t know.

* * *

 

The dreams start around the same time she starts noticing the shadows in her new apartment and they start small, just like the shadows. She dreams of teeth, sharp teeth, in her mouth. Dangerously sharp teeth and in her dreams, she smiles with them, she sees people she doesn’t like and she grins at them with her sharp sharp teeth and they scream. She likes hearing their dream screams, it’s fun, it’s gratifying.

And that’s what Isabella justifies it as, subliminal gratification. She can punch Jessica in the face so she dreams about scaring the bitch, she can’t start a fight with Todd so she dreams about him screaming and running in fear. She’s not stupid, it’s just a coping mechanism for her subconscious to sort shit out, and it’s way fucking better than getting smashed every weekend. She still gets smashed though.

So when the dreams jump and her tongue joins her teeth in the ‘inhuman’ thing, she doesn’t worry. She dreams about biting people now, ripping throats and chunks of flesh. She dreams about ripping out hearts and licking the blood running down her arms as she laughs at her victims. And sure it’s a little gory, a little much, but it isn’t real so it’s okay.

It’s not real so when the dreams jump again and she starts to see in shades of black, it’s fine. It’s just another subconscious thing, just like the shadow people that walk around her house. Even when she wakes up with blood in her mouth, not hers, it’s fine.

* * *

 

Seamus doesn’t know what to think about the dreams-nightmares-dreams? He doesn’t know what to think, he doesn’t even know what they are because they aren’t scary but they’re unsettling, they’re not violent but they’re far from peaceful. They’re a paradox and he doesn’t know how to deal with them.

What’s he supposed to say to Frank who wakes up in a cold sweat or to Shun who stares at nothing for minutes at a time, tracing his lips over and over. What is Seamus supposed to say to Freygarður who stays quiet and silent until someone says something and they all snap back to normal. Or as normal as they ever get before it’s night time again and the visions come again?

Compared to them, Seamus’ dreams are nothing. He dreams of sharp teeth and black eyes. He dreams of playing war songs on a flute, a _flute_ of all things. He dreams of pressing his lips to this foreign instrument and rousing terrible creatures to war, dead things, things that should be dead. He dreams of standing above them all, playing, playing, playing them to fight and kill and die over and over again.

He is their Master and their destruction.

And next to him, dancing and laughing and screaming and screeching next to him? His friends, Frank looking every bit a devil, Shun a stitched doll, Freygarður with some **_thing_** moving inside of him. And in the distance, a girl, a girl every bit corrupt as the rest of them, dancing with the shadow of something Seamus should recognise. He doesn’t know the girl but he should know her partner, but he can’t…remember.

So how does he tell his friends about these dreams? He can’t, they’re nothing compared to the horrors they see. So Seamus says nothing and dreams of war.


	22. The Deity who lived a Million times, Twice.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Pink Entity was never named but always known, he was meant to be a guide and a protector for the Child. The blessed and cursed child, in all the Child's forms and lives, he would follow to see them through. This much is true and continues on in the cycle we know so well.

He doesn’t know why he helps this child, this strangely evil and innocent Child. He has no stakes in this game, he has no reason to play or to even watch, but he does. He watches the precious Child grow and his evil grow with him. He watches the Child start wars and spill oceans of blood while the two kings watch with pleased and saddened smiles respectively.

He watches the Child use the mortals as his playthings, gaining interest in them and losing it the second a new fancy catches his attention. He watches the Child play with the Tiers of Being, changing them and warping them, twisting them into unnatural things and in unnatural ways until he gets bored of that too. He watches the Child disappear into his white room where he is God and when the time comes, when the end arrives, he takes the Child into the room and restarts the omniverse.

The second Child is…not the same and he mourns the Child he lost. He doesn’t miss the needless, heedless evil but he misses the boundless, beautiful love. In between all the gore and horror there was love too, in the quiet moments, in the lower tiers, when the Child went among them. His godliness hidden under a veneer of humanity, the Child learned love and it was the only reason he wasn’t condemned to suffer as the lowest among the wretched.

He followed the Child then too, a patient guardian watching and waiting for the Child to return to his place in the cosmos but enjoying himself too. Watching the Child learn the joys of the world was far more beautiful than watching him add to the agonies and sorrows of it, so much more innocent and the way the Child should be. Of the things he missed in the second omniverse, he missed the true childish wonder the most because the second time around there was no wonder, only enthused understanding.

Every gift given to the second Child was understood in its entirety within seconds and without exception. There was no wonder, no mystery and though he loved the Child just as much the second time around, he couldn’t help but miss what he’d lost. He loved the Child in both incarnations but he didn’t understand why he had to lose one to have the other, couldn’t he have both with him? Both of his precious Children, even if it was only the one Child, couldn’t he have both?

No, no he couldn’t. He could not have both, no matter the tier, no matter the life, no matter the circumstances he toyed with to give himself more time. The boy who lived twice a million times, oh if only it were as simple, he would have preferred, The boy who lived a million lives twice. Even so, in spite and despite and maybe because of that, he made sure to be there in every life. He made sure to hide himself within the lower tiers so he could lead the Child and protect the child and guide the Child to his divine destiny.

And this time, this time he gets something so close to the First Child it hurts deep in his soul. When the Child calls himself Chin Chin, when the Child shows promise as a young Peace lord, when the child turns bitter and blind, it reminds him of the First. And he has to go to the Child, he always has to go, even if he knows it will only end in pain, especially then.

So he fashions himself a new body, he calls himself after the old Gods and forgets what he knows so he can be with the Child again. He’ll live and die as many times as the Child does, over and over, he’ll drown and burn and suffer and starve. He’ll do anything to protect the Child, even kill the one he loves so much. He’ll fight and murder and break and scream until his lungs burst for the one he loves so dearly, even if he has to fight one version of the boy he loves to protect another, he will and he has and he needs to now.

* * *

 

Freygarður doesn’t know what compels him to find the creature shrieking in pain. He doesn’t know what compels him to sneak through dangerous realms to find it, the source of the screaming, keening, raging _thing_. He doesn’t know so he leaves it to some higher power and pick his way carefully.

“O Chin Chin!” the creature screams and Freygarður doesn’t know what the words mean, which is concerning because he knows every language across the realms. He doesn’t know why he does only that he does so this thing, screaming with words he can’t understand is even stranger.

“O Chin Chin!” the creature shrieks, whipping around and staring Frey dead in the….oh

“Let me help,” he shouts without meaning to but he can’t help himself. He’s never seen something so terrible before and he’s seen some shit, a lot of shit, so much fucking shit in this terrible, wild world. Somehow this poor creature beats it all back, with its bloody sewn shut eyes, terrible and grotesque. He doesn’t know whether he pities it or fears it more and the fact he can’t tell makes it even worse.

Somehow.

“Ore wa?” the creature asks, Frey think it asks and he takes a step closer, moving deliberately, as nosily as he can. He can see the teeth peeking through gently parted lips and he’s not one to judge based on colour but he’s never met another full black lycra before. He doesn’t know what to think of it and doesn’t know what to do but he wants to help. He can’t leave it here now, to suffer.

He has nothing else, no family, no friends, if he dies here, there’s no one to miss him so that’s good at least. And something brought him here, something told him where to go and gave him approximate coordinates so he’s meant to be here it’s just, does the creature know that?

“I can help,” he says even though he doesn’t know that, the threads slicing through the tender flesh is silver and it…moves. He can see it moving through the skin, always moving and never letting the wounds heal, it’s disgusting and terrible.

“Please let me help you,” Frey murmurs, taking another step and breathing shallow and sharp as the creature turns to him, looks at him for all intents and purposes.

“Ochin Chin,” the creature nods and Frey thinks this might be the worst idea he’s ever had but he was sent here to do something so he’ll do something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be clear, the Pink Entity reincarnates every time the Child does. Chin Chin and Frank are incarnations of the Child and Pink Guy is an incarnation of the Pink Entity. The Pink Guy here is not the same one Frank meets later, he's simply a hollow vessel created to be inhabited by the Entity, when he's done helping the newest incarnation of the Child, the Entity leaves the vessel for another. 
> 
> The vessels have no past and no family, they are one of a kind and very rarely do people remember the past vessels by the time the Entity is inhabiting a new one. No one ever makes the connection between the pink lycras, even though they all share the same name through time and the one who helps Chin Chin here simply disappears after CC's rise to power.


	23. Call me Salamander Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I prefer it.

Seamus runs, it’s what he does. He isn’t a fighter, he can’t-he can’t snap a neck with his bare hands and he can’t hold something under the water until it drowns, he can’t slit a throat with his claws and leave the creature to bleed out. His brothers would tease him for it, the caudata clan was bred for war, they were fighters, always.

Seamus runs, it’s what he does when Serendeputy turns against the Salamanders. He can’t rile up his clan to fight, he can’t stand with the other musicians and play the war songs, he can’t watch his family and friends die in all-out attack. He **_can’t_**. So he runs, he’s a coward so he runs to a lesser realm, he leaves them all to die because he can’t watch it happen.

He. Left. Them.

“Seamus, what’re you doing?” Safari Man asks and he almost jumps off the fridge, it’s always so strange to hear his name now. He got used to not having it either because no one knew it or because they couldn’t say it, Linden couldn’t but that was a speech impediment. Frank never asked it, at least he doesn’t think he ever did; Frank was a young rankenfile back then and he didn’t know fuck about shit so Seamus can forgive him.

Frank also gave him a different name, Salamander Man, which was close enough to hurt and should have but didn’t. Salamander Man wasn’t the one who left his tribe to be tortured and killed, Salamander Man was the one who chased Linden away from the stupid new rankenfile. Salamander Man was the one who fought in the Great Negi War, he was a hero, he helped his friends and showed them the real might of the Salamander Clan.

Then Salamander Man was the one who gave up his music for a friend and he was the one who left his past behind, fully and completely, for a new future. Seamus was a coward and Salamander Man was a true friend, Seamus should be dead and well technically so should Salamander Man, they should all be dead but somehow they weren’t. Chin Chin was gone, somehow, and so were the other Peace lords, somehow, and there weren’t even any chimpillas hounding them, somehow.

He blamed Frank.

“Nyess,” he answers carefully, poking his project and hissing when it jumps.

“Weren’t Frogs part of the caudata clans?” Safari Man points out, well Shun but he prefers Safari Man so mmmm.whatever.

“Nyess,” he says and sticks his tongue out because he didn’t care if his aunt had married a Frog and he’d had tadpole cousins, he just didn’t like them. Specially these stupid little bloops living in this realm, these weren’t Frogs, they were barely tadpoles, they were ugly fuckers who couldn’t even speak caudata.

“Why are you taping two of them together?” Shun sighs and Seamus sees his hand reaching for The Broom™. He hates The Broom™ and he has no idea where Frank even got one, no one cleaned around here, ever, the filth just disappeared sometimes and no one questioned it. He doesn’t know whether The Broom™ showed up one day or someone actually went out and bought it. He doesn’t really care either, it’s cheap and plastic and is worse than the spray bottle.

“Nyess!” he screams and flings a box at the man as he snatches up his plastic container of frogs and scrambles off the fridge. He hops down and a frog falls out but he leaves it, all frogs left behind.

“Salamander Man!” Shun yells.

“Nyess!!!” he screams and dives under the bed, shoving shoes and clothes and old take out boxes out of the way. He shoves and shoves, holding his wiggling box of frogs, until he finds the wall and breaks through that too, straight through to the swampy realm. Frank was right, Seamus didn’t know half the shit under the bed but he did know there were pocket portals. Pocket portals no one else was slimy enough to fit through to realms no one else could breathe in the water realms it dumped them into.

“Salamander Man no more frogs!” Frank adds and Salamander Man gives one more wiggle, push and slip.

“Nyess!” he laughs as he plops into a lake and all of his frogs swim out of the box but that’s fine, he can catch more here. He can catch more and he can hide them all in Safari Man’s pillow.


	24. I see

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He does, he really does.

There are reasons he doesn’t like his real name. Shun was the son of a whore and a drunkard. Shun was the grandson of a woman who’d prefer to send him to his grave than to school. Shun was an angry little bastard who lied and lied and lied, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d told the truth.

Shun is not a name he prefers and for all the heartache Francis brings him, he’s also grateful for the kindness. Francis is his friend and yes his friend stole his apartment, technically, only technically ha ha, his friend also forgave him for not fighting in the War. Frank also knows what Chin Chin did, knew that the lie about the Negi was just another one of his lies and never told the others about it.

Frank gave him his new name and he enjoys it, Frank gave Seamus a new name too and he’s not quite sure if the caudata prefers it to his old one or some mix between the two. Ah names, they are interesting, incredible things and Shun prefers the new to the old. He prefers to think of Frank shouting Safari Man when he burst through the door after millions of years apart to his father screaming it in another drunken fit.

Yes, he much prefers his new family too. A family of brothers and lovers of the world; Francis and Franklin, Frey and Seamus, Drone and Centurion, Maxine and Isabella, Pinocchio and Percy, Kohe even all are his family even if they don’t all live in his apartment. He always wanted a huge family but without having to marry into one or make it himself, he was terrible with children, ha ha simply terrible.

“Storm chasing?” Pinocchio asks suddenly and he yelps. He will never get used to the strange entity showing up so unexpectedly, something between a chimpilla and a rankenfile, Pinocchio is another left over experiment. There are so many, Shun’s seen dozens of them across the realms he likes to visit and some aren’t as friendly as Pinocchio or Kohe, some of them are down right nasty. He supposes it’s a good thing the nice ones seem drawn to Frank some way or the other and that Frank is the most powerful Being now too, that helps.

 “Ha ha don’t fucking do that,” he mutters, turning away from the light show between the clouds to glare at Pinocchio. In the darkness, the entity looks like a piece of lightning escaped from the sky, came down from the sky for a closer look at the world it danced over. The imagery is poetic but he doesn’t think anything else would suit the silver creature, Pinocchio is beautiful and he knows it.

Everything about him is beautiful, the languid silver limbs and the porcelain white face, the ink black brows and full red lips. He even manages to make the cursed black eyes appear mysterious instead of predatory and that’s a feat of its own and Shun’s always reluctantly impressed by it. Something so pretty shouldn’t be as much of an asshole as Pinocchio is but it’s the way of the Omniverses.

Safari Man moves over, letting the silver lycra climb down from the wall and prop his elbows on the balcony railing too. He **_was_** out here watching the storm roll in, there’s something undeniably beautiful about it and Shun likes beautiful things, glancing across at Pinocchio, he knows Chin Chin did too. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say Chin Chin liked corrupting beautiful things.

Franklin comes to mind, black eyed and broken souled. He’s handsome, in the same way Francis is, and he’s beautiful in his devotion, Chin Chin must’ve had fun breaking that man. Pinocchio, hmm, Shun wouldn’t say Pinocchio is broken but looking at those eyes he knows the lycra is broken, someway or somehow he was broken. It’s the only reason anyone would take Chin Chin’s offer of eyes, people who had other choices didn’t take the eyes and Shun’s quite lucky he had other options otherwise he would’ve been a cast out, confused ‘project’ of the Dark Lord’s.

Some of them don’t even know they **_are_** projects, Franklin doesn’t know, Pinocchio doesn’t know, Maxine has an _idea_ but she still doesn’t know. Shun is the only one who sees the truth of their souls, the warped pieces and broken pieces and pieces shoved in that shouldn’t be there at all. He’s always been able to see the reality of things, it’s why he never fell into Chin Chin’s traps and lies and it’s the only reason he isn’t dead right now.

As a child hiding from his drunkard father, as a man running from his home, as a rankenfile doing his level best to avoid the chimpillas chasing after him. Now there’s nothing to hide from, nothing dangerous around, but he still has his gift. He sees the people up there in the lightning, the ones made from it, creatures of light and power and beauty. He sees them dancing and prancing on the clouds, they race each other and they play strange games.

Shun has absolutely no idea what they are, he’s never seen anything like them before and he only sees them in storms. He thinks he’s half in love with them which is really strange when he considers Pinocchio grinning next to him because Pinocchio is the closest thing to them he’s ever seen. Not to say he wouldn’t fuck a lycra, he’s fucked lycras before, it’s some of the best sex he’s ever had and he’s had a lot of sex ha ha, so much, tons of it.

He’s really glad there’s no mirror in front of him now because he’d hate to see through his own lies.

“What you mind a companion?” Pinocchio offers with a grin, an actual grin, one that isn’t sly and wry, he’s learning. After hanging around their strange family for a handful of weeks, he’s learnt a lot and he’s unlearnt even more, it’s wonderful to see.

“The more the merrier, ha ha,” he laughs, actually laughs and pulls out a flask from his pocket. He always carries something these days, even when he’s only leaving the kitchen and climbing onto the ‘balcony’ that’s really just the fire escape, even then he brings it.

“You act well,” Pinocchio murmurs as he takes the flask and sniffs at it before handing it back. Shun shrugs as he drinks from it, he’ll find something the lycra likes soon enough, it shouldn’t be hard.

“We all do,” he replies as simply as he can because it is true, every single one of them puts on an act and he sees through them all but keeps his mouth shut. When he sees the murkiness in their eyes and the lie in their voices, he keeps his mouth shut. When they see the same thing in him, they do too and they all do the only thing they can, live.


	25. Devils in the Details

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are so many omniverses that exist and there are so many entities that live in them and Frank's only seen a fraction of a fraction of them all. So meeting a devil in a bar isn't the worst place to start.

The club’s a nice place, casino, bar? Whatever it is, it’s a nice place, Frank doesn’t really know what to call it but it’s nice, he gets why Kohe and Isabella come here all the time. He doesn’t really get how he was invited to see them perform but he’s just glad to be here at all. He feels fancy swirling whiskey in a glass, wearing a shirt with only two stains along the hem and new pair of snazzy glasses. He even combed his hair.

“Well well, a Peacelord in my humble den? Should I be honoured or aroused?” a…man asks, well it looks like a man but Frank knows this person is far from human. There’s something about the shape of his eyes and the curl of his lips as he takes a seat opposite Frank, dropping onto the leather with a careless grace no human could pull off. He smiles and his canines glint in the dim light and Frank gets the distinct impression they’re too short.

“Didn’t you hear, there ain’t anymore Peacelords buddy,” Frank scoffs as he knocks back his drink but he doesn’t take his eyes off the ‘man’. Frank’s the most powerful around nowadays but he’s still learning shit and he has no fucking idea what’s sitting across from him with a smirk and its chin propped on its fist.

Whatever it is, it’s handsome at least, really handsome, sexy. Frank doesn’t know if it’s the black eyes reflecting back red or the messy black hair falling in a way that’s deliberately messy, it has to be. The face is unplacebale but familiar too, something about the planes of it, the angles and the hollows of the cheeks, or is it the line of the jaw? Frank knows this person from somewhere.

“Humble? Mmm it’s a good look on you Francis but I think I’d look better,” the thing laughs, low and smoky, lips curved up in a smirk that’s every bit as predatory as the easy grace. He puts the glass down carefully, doesn’t let it clack against the table even though he’d much rather smash it against the table, break it and leave his blood handprints on the wooden top. He wants to start a fight with this thing, trash this whole bar because he doesn’t know what it is but he knows it’s dangerous.

This thing is dangerous and there are two mortals in here, two mortals who’ve probably been in here with this thing before.

“I’ll kill you,” he snarls, waiting for the smirk to drop and a sneer to replace it. This thing is a Peacelord, or something close, it’s dangerous and Frank needs to get Kohe and IG away from here before it tries some shit. He remembers what happened the last time he saw a Peacelord in a bar with people he loved, he remembers the hollow ache in his chest even if he did forgive the fucker in the end.

“Sixth base and you haven’t even asked my name? Fuck Frank, you’re smooth,” the thing laughs, beckoning someone over and Frank doesn’t look up when whoever it is stops by the edge of the table.

“What the hell are you doing Ramsey?”…Kohe?

Frank’s head snaps up and he ignores the cricking of his bones because Kohe _knows_ this thing? Kohe called this thing Ramsey and sounded annoyed like he doesn’t know this thing could kill him in seconds if it wanted to. In fact, he sounded more than annoyed, or annoyed and something else and it wasn’t afraid.

“You told me to play nice and I am, I was just being a good host,” Ramsey teases, leaning back and throwing his arms wide but Kohe still glares at him. Frank doesn’t really know Kohe all that well, he knows the kid did some shit that meant he had to a fake his death because that’s a thing and based on those hands it had something to do with the yakuza. Other than that though, Frank doesn’t know the kid, Franklin loves him and Izzy likes him, Maxine is weird but she likes the kid too.

So Frank doesn’t know the kid well but he trusts him and apparently the kid knows something that’s not a Peacelord but not from a lesser tier either. This kid is really really weird.

“Frank, this is Ramsey, he’s from another omniverse and a Devil,” Kohe explains, never taking his eyes off the devil, a devil from another omniverse, okay. God exists so why not the devil? Even though this devil doesn’t seem more powerful than him, maybe in other omniverses they have Devils instead of Peacelords which would make sense, he guesses at least. He’ll ask Pink about it when he gets home.

“That’s Devil capital **_D_** ,” Ramsey adds helpfully, laughing when Kohe rolls his eyes but the kid doesn’t say anything more and walks off again. Frank watches him duck through the crowd all the way to the stage where IG’s sitting at the grand piano, laughing with someone else, looking just as strange next to her as ‘Ramsey’ does.

“I come here to relax, less responsibility in another omniverse,” Ramsey says casually and Frank turns back to him and _there_ it is. The ‘Devil’ isn’t just a handsome man with a familiar face anymore, Frank recognises him now and he still wants to punch the fucker in the face. He knows this asshole, he remembers the face and he remembers the horns, he’s seen this asshole before and he’s seen this asshole a lot.

“You have the casino in the Luxury realm,” Frank mutters and Ramsey smiles wide enough to show off the too long, too inhuman teeth. He’s seen this fucker’s face plastered on the sign outside the biggest building in the Luxury realm, the one that’s kind of like Times Square but only just. He’s seen the horns and the fangs and the grin but he’s never seen the eyes, the black black eyes that reflect red.

“I do! I’d be happy to give you a private tour or two, Frankie,” he offers with an over exaggerated wink. Frank thinks he understands why Kohe treated this guy the way he did, he’s sleazy and smarmy, he doesn’t seem dangerous at all but he is, Frank knows he is. But Frank’s dangerous too.

“Cut the shit demon boy, can’t you tell me what you really want?” he asks, quietly, voice too low to hear under the white noise of the bar, all the people talking, the shouting and laughing and instruments tuning. He doesn’t bother raising his voice though because they’re not lower tiered, Ramsey’s the closest to his own tier around anymore and he’s the first one who didn’t attack him on sight. Ramsey’s the only one who’s ever tried to talk and the only one who’s ever…flirted? Is this flirting? He’s not sure.

“I want to fuck someone who can handle it, and I wanted to meet the upstart lil shit who took down Chin Chin,” he says easily but the smile slips off his face and he actually looks serious. Not like he’s about to attack but it isn’t harmless either, it’s…wry? Frank doesn’t know how to describe it and he doesn’t think he has the words to.

“I don’t want to rule your omniverse Frankie, I’ve got my own shit to deal with, I just…like taking breaks once in a while,” Ramsey finishes with a smirk that’s sadder than Frank thinks it was meant to be. He doesn’t know what kind of relationship this Devil had with Chin Chin but somehow he thinks this guy is lonely, or he’s missing something. And well he said it, he said he wanted someone he could fuck who could take it and since the cave, that’s Frank.

There’s no one else around on his tier and he didn’t mind it, personally, the only Peacelords he’d know had tried to kill him, or his friends, or threatened to make them suffer for all eternity. He doesn’t know what it would have been like if he’d been friendly with any of them and then suddenly they’re gone and there’s only the person who killed them left but he couldn’t even kill that person cause that person was too strong. Try to make friends maybe? Try to make sure the person didn’t kill him too?

“I thought Peacelords were all about ruling the Omniverse,” he tries because if this goes to shit then he can say he tried, at least he tried.

“I’m not a Peacelord, close, but we don’t have those in my Omni. We have devils and demons and angels and other shit. Me? I just found a few realms I liked and I made them mine, I rule that, but it gets boring sometimes and your Omni used to be fun before _you_ went and made it less fun,” Ramsey sighs and he doesn’t meet Frank’s eyes.

“Chin Chin was the top dog, we used to play and it used to get bloody, oh Frankie you don’t know how easy you got off. But you beat him so maybe you’re just as bad as him, worse even, maybe you’ll rip my heart out of my chest and make me choke on it, or maybe you’re actually a _Peace_ Lord. Either way, all I want from you is a good fuck and a good time,” Ramsey finishes with a smile and this one really is sad and Frank thinks the Devil knows exactly how sad it makes him look. He really is lonely and he wants Frank to be his friend?

“Are all Devils batshit or are you just special?” Frank asks but he still leans forwards, he…he already collects Chin Chin’s old servants so old friends shouldn’t be so different?

“Why not let me show you Frankie? I could show you all night long,” Ramsey teases and the smile is back, wide and bright and this is flirting, a devil from another omniverse is flirting with him, Pink’s gonna be so fucking jealous.

“Music first,” Frank says because Kohe invited him for a reason, IG was probably the reas-his eyes narrow in suspicion as he looks across at the stage where the two mortals are playing something slow and sensual, then back at the Devil sitting across from him.

“This was a set-up, wasn’t it?” he grumbles, scrunching his nose and crossing his arms.

“Yup, so you still interested in the music Frankie or do you want to learn about Devils?” and the smirk is back in full force, canines catching the dim light somehow, eyes bright and shinning promise. And well, there’s no reason _not_ to. He’s stronger than anything in any omniverse and the Devil’s a handsome…devil, and it’s not like Frank’s got anything important he’d be blowing off to fuck Ramsey.

Although if he disappears, he knows Kohe will tell Franklin and IG will tell Maxine and those two will make sure the whole realm knows he fucked a Devil but that’s still not a _bad_ thing. Plus Pink will be even _more_ jealous if he fucks the Devil and Safari Man might even stop trying to buy him a prostitute for the night.

And he gets to fuck a Devil.

“Fuck it, yeah sure.”


	26. Mad Maxi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly it's about damn time I made this stupid joke and y'all can't stop me.

She’s not a hunter, well, she’s not a hunter the same way Safari Man is, yeah? Maxine’s a tracker, she follows trails across the realms and dimensions and omniverses if she has to and finds her targets. Then she kills them, mmm **_most_** of the time she kills them. Sometimes she just roughs them up a bit and lets them off with a warning, a few broken bones and some new traumas to deal with.

She was good at her job, she _liked_ her job. As a chimpilla there wasn’t much else for her to do, yeah? She had options, course she did, but they weren’t great ones and they didn’t pay out as big and hormones are expensive things across the realms. Being a tracker was the smartest choice, it had a big pay out and she could travel as much as she, needed whenever and wherever she needed to go.

Now she doesn’t have any Peacelords to work for which is good and bad, bad because she had to build up a new clientele but good because of the new people just rushing to fill in the power gap. Everybody wanted a piece of the pie and everybody wanted to send messages, she was getting more work than she’d ever had before and it was great. She loved her work, the thrill of the chase and the work of the hunt, there wasn’t anything she liked better than the wetness of blood dripping down her knuckles.

Really, she loved it and yeah alright, maybe palling around with Franklin and Kohe should’ve made her cool down a bit but really it just made her worse. Kohe was a good boy, kept to himself and all but he was a scrappy fuck when he wanted to be. Franklin, oh well Franky boy knew how to take care of himself, didn’t he? He used to be Chin Chin’s pet yeah but he was an attack dog first and always, ready and willing to sink his teeth in and hold on for all he was worth if she’s being truthful about it.

It’s easy to forget how savage and violent her boys really are under all that trauma and sadness. Sometimes she forgets Kohe ain’t some shy little Japanese boy who can never go home and never really acquaint himself with his new city and all these new people. And sometimes it’s easy to remember Franky as another abused, used victim of Chin Chin’s, to brush aside all the wrong, bad, vicious things he’s done and treat him like a sad mite. She knows better and it’s still easy to fall into.

So no, being around Kohe and Franklin hasn’t made her anything but itching to get back to her work and tonight’s job is simple. All she has to do is find some no name schmuck of a rankenfile who’s been causing problems for her latest employer and rough him up a little bit, no killing but plenty of hurting. Another thing different about her new gigs, she gets to leave people living after she’s done with them, on request even which is strange all on its own.

Right now for example, she’s tracking down some no name Negi because he owes some other no name Negi money. It barely pays, hell her take barely covers getting to the realms she needs to but she’s not doing it for the pay out this time. Nah, she took it because it lets her come back home, or well, the place she was born at least and visit some people she hasn’t had the chance to see in a while.

The realm’s far out, nearly an outskirt, only a few miles short of being one really but the distance is really the only thing that stops it from being an outskirt realm. The mentality of the people is the same as any other little, isolated town in bumfuck nowhere and the people who live there are the kind who don’t give a fuck about the rest of the omniverse. She strolls in calm as you please and not a single thing’s changed so at least she’s right about it.

The houses are the same washed out, faded out colours, the people are the same washed out, half dead people. She knows if she walks a few minutes outside of the town she’ll find the still warm husk of a house, she’ll find the bones of a home and she’ll find the old dried out well because time means nothing here. Yesterday’s the same as tomorrow’s the same as today, no one changes, no one grows, no one does anything.

Really she doesn’t know why she does this to herself. Why she comes back here at all, dressed all fancy in her tracking gear with her bat on her shoulder and her brass knuckles shining in the sun. The people watch her as she strolls along, muttering about her, who she is and how could she do that to her own ‘brother’, as if any of these old fucking fools know anything about her and Maxwell. As if these fucking fools know who Maxwell really was.

It’s easy, out in these no name towns, for people to forget the rest of the omniverse exists. They like to pretend it doesn’t at least, all these rankenfiles forget chimpillas exist and all these cisnormative fuckers like to pretend they’ve never heard of a trans person in their whole lives yeah? So here she is, a trans chimpilla just strolling along their dusty streets like she owns the place and they change the stories they know to fit the narrative they want.

‘Oh she had a brother, they were twins, the Stanley twins. Lived outside of town with their ma, lovely woman that Marcella. Shame how she died. Now you didn’t hear it from me but Marcella might’ve bit off more than she could chew with that daughter of hers, always causing trouble, just look how she’s dressed now. Well one night, lil Maxine set the whole house on fire and burned her ma and brother inside, oh nobody around here can prove it but we all know she did it. Her own flesh and bloody, that girl’s got no soul.’

 They’re right about two things at least, she did burn her house down and her mother with it, and she doesn’t have a soul. In a sense, souls aren’t as marketable these days but when she sold hers it was a pretty good deal, she was already a chimpilla and a few extra chromosomes never hurt anybody. Burning her bitch of a mother to death was just a perk really, and it was easier to just kill her than listen to her complain about the father Maxine never knew and how things would be so different if he’d just stuck around.

She doesn’t think it would’ve changed a single thing, rightly speaking, her dad was a chimpilla too and somehow those never got alone with each other. Maxine doesn’t know how a chimpilla and a mortal make another chimpilla but she doesn’t exactly know anyone she can ask so she just doesn’t care. Bottom line, her dad wouldn’t have made anything better and her ma was just a vindictive cunt of a woman who wanted what she wanted and didn’t care about her son, or her daughter.

“I’m looking for Negi Generation 300,” she tells one of the kids playing in the dust at the side of the road. She knows they don’t know where the Negi is, probably haven’t even heard of one outside of whatever stories they’ve heard but that’s not why she asks.

“That’s just a story miss,” one of the older boys answers, he can’t be older than seven, but he’s polite though his eyes stay glued on her bat.

“Do I look like a story?” she asks, smiling at them, dropping the little piece of glamour she wears when she travels. She can’t have words getting back to her targets that Mad Maxi is wandering around after all, so she hides her teeth, she hides her claws and the general inhumanness of herself. But these kids, these kids aren’t gonna go around telling people what they saw, who’d believe them?

Just who would listen to the poor little kiddies who saw a woman’s skin melt off her face and leave her grinning skull behind? Who’d believe her eyes fell out of her head and left nothing in their place? Who’d believe her nails were claws and her teeth were fangs and even though they couldn’t see the rest of her body, they knew she was just a skeleton walking around in a meat suit?

No one, no one would believe them and that’s the point yeah? No one will believe them but they won’t forget her. They’ll want answers they won’t get here so they’ll leave, they’ll get away from this sad little town and go looking for the answers they need. And maybe they’ll actually find them, or her, and she’ll get to explain that she’s not really a pile of bones wandering around the wastelands. She’s got organs and skin and blood and all those good things but her head really is a skull, her ma hated it so much.

“Take care of yourselves kiddies,” she laughs, patting one of the little girls on the head and pulling back on her glamour to hide her real face behind the ‘pretty’ one. She leaves the slack jawed kiddies with a smile and a wave before she’s cutting through unfenced backyards and back out into the spaces between realms.

She can feel their eyes on her back as she goes but she doesn’t turn back around. She’s been doing this how long now? Too long, really too long but she won’t stop. She’ll always remember the creature she saw stalking through her backyard when she was a child, when she didn’t know what she was and why her mother made her wear a mask all of the time and a wig some of the time. She’ll always remember the first taste of a world beyond her own and she’s not sure if it was for the better or not but she knows she preferred knowledge to ignorance.


	27. Effigies of Dead Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Should only last as long as the God.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire chapter is dedicated to [Frankly-Unimpressed](https://frankly-unimpressed.tumblr.com/tagged/my-disasters)

Franklin doesn’t really know when this becomes a _thing_ between the two of them. Him and Francis, out at night, wandering realms together. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they stay in New York, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they just sit down and stare up at the sky for hours and hours.

Sometimes he gives Francis coordinates, streams and reams of numbers burned into his brain and they go exploring. Sometimes he tells Francis about the stranger ones, ones full of invisible creatures, ones that are just barren wastes, ones that are chock full of more life than it can sustain. They go everywhere, they go anywhere, Francis likes to travel now that he doesn’t have to worry about creatures hunting him down to kill him or use him.

Tonight they’re…tonight Franklin makes a mistake. He makes the first mistake he’s made since he fell into that empty, dead realm and he doesn’t even realise. He doesn’t feel the numbers in his mouth, flowing past his lips so smooth and familiar, he doesn’t even realise until they’re there. He doesn’t realise he made a mistake until it’s staring him in the face, crumbling and ruined and there, right there.

And he should turn around, he should tell Francis what this is and they should leave but he doesn’t. He leads the way up the stairs, the broken, crumbling stairs and waits at the top for Francis to follow them.

In this realm there is no light, only what you bring with you, only what you make yourself but Franklin can see. He’s never needed light to see and he’s never needed darkness to be blind. Francis though, he’s powerful and he can do a lot of things but he still needs light to see so he makes his own, bright and white and so different to the red glow he was used to here. The white light throws shadows everywhere, brings the cursed granite and marble to life, or maybe shows off its death throes.

He doesn’t know.

“What happened?” Francis asks, walking down the length of the Temple, taking his light with him and leaving Franklin by the stairs. Franklin knows he means the broken pillars and crumbling walls, the missing roof and cracked floors, but he can’t hear the other question underneath it. What was this place, who was it to, what kind of Temple is it? Why did Franklin bring them here?

And he wants to answer, to say this was Chin Chin’s, to say he made a mistake, he made a fucking mistake and he’s sorry and please just take him home but he can’t. All he can do is stand silently and watch Francis walk around, listen to his footsteps echoing around the old wreck and breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.

He knows the layout of the Temple. He knows what it was like in its splendor, millions and millions of years ago. He knows the thirteen pillars with six on either side and the seventh at the apex of the semicircle. He knows the stretch of wall between each pillar and the niches set in them, the place for the altars and the place for the mirrors. He knows the ones that broke and where their pieces are, the beautiful broken pieces and why they were broken, he even knows where the missing ones are.

“What the fuck?!”

And he knows what Francis found and he wants to run. He wants to run from this realm, just run until his legs give out on him, until he can’t see the darkness hanging heavier than any fog or mist. He wants to leave, but he can’t.

“It’s Chin Chin,” he says instead, closing his eyes and breathing slowly, shallow and so carefully.

“A mural made in his image,” he continues, keeping his eyes closed because he doesn’t want to see it. Francis is staring up at it but Franklin’s seen it, he could probably recreate it with ink and paper, or clay or paint or blood or bone just like the original. He remember asking about it, wondering why and how it moved, why the blood with drip from the eyes, why the hands would change, why the mouths would close and open, why the tongues would move.

He remembers asking about it but he doesn’t remember the answer he got. He knows he got one but he can’t remember it, it’s lost between the ebb and flow of chromosomes, between every fucking and every bit of torture. He remembers the taste of silver blood spreading on his tongue like butter and he remembers the growling, snarling moans in his ears but he can’t remember the mural. And he knows it’s what Chin Chin wanted, he never wanted anyone to know what it was, not even his most loyal servant.

“He could see through those eyes and speak through those mouths, he could sign with those hands, I don’t know how but he could,” and his voice is strong, casual, he sounds the same talking about this as he is talking about any other realm. He could be explaining why Monoxide 12 is toxic, Chin Chin’s fault, or why Pangea isn’t broken up, continental drift didn’t exist there.

“He used to have mirrors too, ones with his image set _in_ them, and he could see through those eyes too. He gave one to his favourite mortal girl, not that she knew, but it’s still there,” Franklin explains and he remembers putting the mirror shard there. Waiting around for hours for Isabella to leave the apartment before he could slip in and break into her home to leave the shard of glass somewhere she wouldn’t notice. He thinks it was a test, or maybe Chin Chin was just being lazy that day, he doesn’t know why he was the one sneaking into her home when Chin Chin didn’t even have to sneak around.

…he doesn’t think he’ll ever tell her. Franklin probably should because Kohe knows her, Isabella, and Maxine likes her so he should probably tell her but he won’t. He doesn’t want to, he doesn’t know why, it’s stupid but he wants to keep that to himself. He loved her, in a way, and he wants to keep part of her to himself, is that wrong?

“ _Franklin_.”

 “Yeah.”

And he opens his eyes and sees it, the mural of his God, grinning at him. He sees the blood falling, dripping, always, always. He sees the hands moving, signing words at him ‘traitor, betrayal, treachery’ over and over. He sees the tongues lashing, he sees the teeth glinting, biting again and again.

He sees the blood dripping.

“Franklin, look at me.”

He wants to, he does, but he sees the mural instead. He doesn’t see the light Francis made, he doesn’t see the darkness above them, falling on them, holding them here, trapping them. He only sees the mural of his Lord, the one that’s mocking him and _taunting_ him and **_cursing_** him.

“Look at me…please?”

He doesn’t even realise he’s shrugging Francis’ arm off, barely feels the fingers that were digging into his arms. He’s walking, calmly, deliberately, but with purpose. Head high, shoulders back and _murder_ in his mind.

The mural bleeds as it always does and the hands mock him as he stops in front of it. He was always a rankenfile, even when he didn’t know he was one, he was a rankenfile. When he was being fucked senseless he was a rankenfile and when he torturing things for his God he was a rankenfile. Rankenfiles make their own chromosomes and chimpillas hunt them, Peacelords use chimpillas to gather more and more chromosomes.

Rankenfiles were strong, always, they made their own strength, if they were left alone, they could be strong. No one has touched Franklin’s chromosomes in so long, he has more now than he ever did under Chin Chin and when he hits the wall, his hand doesn’t hurt as much as it should. When he pounds his fists on the mural, they don’t hurt, barely hurt, when he kicks it and screams at it, all he feels is the anger burning in his blood.

He doesn’t even know what he’s screaming, if there are words or if it’s all just one long shriek of rage and pain and fear and hatred.

He hits and hits and hits, he doesn’t stop until he feels it breaking under his split knuckles. He breaks it up, breaks it apart, breaks it down. He doesn’t stop until he can’t see, until he’s breathing so hard he thinks his lungs will burst and his throat is sore and his hands are slick with his own blood. He has to get rid of it, he has to kill it. Francis killed Chin Chin, got rid of him, Franklin’s just a copy, a shadow of a God but he can do his part, he can do this. He can do _this_.

“Let me do this,” he begs but he sounds like he’s crying.

“Please let me do this,” he sobs as he falls, legs crumpling underneath him, knees hitting hard and he pitches forward. The only thing stopping him from falling right into the rubble he made are gentle hands on his shoulders, holding him, not pulling him or pushing him, just holding him.

“You did it,” Francis whispers, “you did this.”


	28. Purple Penchant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Would she even mind if she knew he didn't love her? She accepts everything else about him after all.

He could say he loved her, he could say he adored her, he could say he wanted her to be with him and by his side and he would be lying

Love belonged to the lower tiers, love was something the pitiful mortals did, they loved each other, they fucked each other and killed for each other. Love was something too sweet, too soft, too intense, too much for Peacelords, too much for a God, too much for **_him_**.

So he never loved her. He never adored her. He _wanted_ her, he wanted her the way kings wanted gold, obsessively and greedily. He wanted her the way wolves starve for meat in the winter, he wanted her viciously and aimalistically. He wanted her the way a drowning man clutches at his savior, dragging them down down down to the depths with him to die in the slick, wicked coolness.

His purple girl, his darling purple girl. Precious and divine and his, _his_ , **_his_**.

His even when she didn’t see him, especially then. His when she woke through the night, smoking smoking smoking her way through essays and assignments and stress and lovers. His when she painted her face, when she dressed in soft cloths and short skirts to dance the night away, drink it and fuck it away.

She was his when she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling with burning eyes and a heaviness in her throat. She was his when she whispered his words to herself, over and over in her unpracticed and ignorant tongue, getting the words wrong, pausing in the wrong places. She was his without knowing it and without realising and it was exactly the way he’d have it.

“Ochin chin.”

And the words skip across the lake, dance over the water the same as the petals falling slow and steady. He sighs and it’s the same breath playing across the lake, sending ripples across the water and the fish scattering. He growls and it’s the same far off thunder echoing through the sky and reminding every creature of this realm. His realm, following _his_ whim, _his_ fancy, **_his_** rule.

He thinks she would like this, the Temple and the lake beyond it. He thinks she would like the lake more, deep in the forest, at the foot of a mountain, surrounded by ever blooming flower trees? Oh she would love it best at night when he dragged the moon high and let it shine down on his realm, His realm, the one he crafted from nothing and adapted to something beautiful.

What would she say if he brought her here? Would she scream on the way over? He’d never touched her before, never done more than lounge around her home and eat her food and steal her books to read. So what would she do if he snatched up her, wrapped his fingers around her wrists and dragged her through a portal?

Would she scream? Hmm, he doesn’t think she would, she’s a strange one for a mortal, not startled so easy and willing to accept a lot. Too much maybe, she accepts the Dark God in her bed most nights, tells him to stay on his side of the bed and goes to sleep. She offers him mortal food as though he’s nothing more than a strange house guest, she treats him as though she doesn’t know what he is.

…because she doesn’t.

She doesn’t know what he is.

“Ochin Chin.”

He could show her, maybe. Bring her here and show her what he looks like beyond the strange humanoid form he presents to her most of the time. He could show her the glisten of his teeth in the moonlight, he could show her the depth of his darkness and the inhumanity of his self.

Would she like it? An eldritch being showing itself off to her- _for_ her? With the petals falling falling falling into the lake, always into the lake, dancing on the winds that tear through the clearing and set the water rippling. With the moon behind him throwing light on his darkness and casting shadows around?

He could stand a blot against the sky, a smudge blocking out the stars and a silhouette against the full moon. He could pose against a tree, let the liquid silver light fall on him and be absorbed into his smoke and shadow body. He could be something darkly beautiful for her, if she wanted. He would slit his throat and paint her likeness onto the water if she asked, he thinks the purple would look lovely on the water, existing only in the moment between the ripples of the wind.

He would do anything she asked because she was his, different to the way Franklin was his, different to the way Pinocchio was his. She was his without pledging herself to him. She was his by simple merit of him wanting her.

But he didn’t love her.

Love was for the lower tiers and he would never let himself fall. Not even for her.


	29. Gleipnir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They sewed his eyes shut to contain his power and what, did you think he sat by and let them do it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Gore, Blood, Murder
> 
> Inspired by Mythical Bug's headcanon

You hear the chains first. Hear them drag-drag-dragging and you worry but not enough to check. You made chains impossible to break didn’t you? Together with your fellows, together with the cowards, you made something to bind someone better than all the rest.

And what did the sound of a cat’s footfall and the beard of a woman bring you?

What did the roots of a mountain and the sinews of a bear give you?

What did you make with the breath of a fish and the spittle of a bird?

Chains impossible to break so why would you ever be worried? So what if you hear the clanking every time you stop? So what if you smell the blood every time you breathe? He can’t find you, a blind, dumb creature bound in chains forged by Peacelords could never find you.

So why are you scared? Why do you keep moving? Moving instead of resting in one of the realms you _took_ from him? Moving instead of enjoying what you _stole_ from him. Moving so you can’t dwell on what you **_did_** to him. Why though? You didn’t do anything wrong did you?

No, no of course not. You just did what you had to ensure your own place in the omniverse. He was too powerful for his own good, if you didn’t do it someone else would have or they would have killed him. Really you were doing him a favour weren’t you, yes yes of course you were. Mmm why can’t you convince yourself of that though?

You can’t make it rest easy in your black soul that what you did was merciful and right and to save your own skin. You lay down to sleep and you hear him screaming, high pitched and desperate, like a child almost and in terms of what you are he is. He’s an infant next to you and all the rest of the Peacelords, he barely knows what a time bomb is and he’s never fought a war in his life. He’s a baby and you did **_that_** to a baby.

No wonder you can’t close your eyes without seeing him trembling all over, crying ugly pitiful tears from his crystal-clear eyes. You see him over and over, shaking like a leaf in the wind as all of you close in around him. You hear him begging in that curious little language of his no one can really understand but it’s obvious what he’s asking for. To live, to please let him go, to please don’t hurt me, I-I’ll do a-anything p-please!

But none of you listened and none of you showed him a speck of mercy. You’re not merciful creatures after all and you all held him still and you all drew the chains tight and you all watched the needle slip through delicate skin. Those eyes of his, well they could see quite a lot couldn’t they? They gave him power and you couldn’t let him have that so why not sew them shut? Why not rip them out though?

Oh because you were arrogant. Because not a single one of you thought he’d survive or break free or come after you. You all wanted him to suffer and scream, bound to the oldest tree in the oldest realm, until he died there crying his bloody tears.

Even if it took trillions of chromosomes, you expected him to die so what was the point of making it an easy death? He’d had the audacity to be talented and powerful after all, transgression enough in this omniverse. It really was his fault after all, nothing else any of you could have done.

Right?

“ ** _Wrong_**.”

Sing song and dry as the dirt falling on a coffin. You know this voice, don’t you? Even as you’re scrambling to your feet, as you’re spreading your wings to fly but you’re a fool. You had to your chance to run _angel_ and you didn’t, you had a chance for mercy but you didn’t give it so now.

“Now the Devil’s here,” he laughs or is it a rasp? And where is he?

“Here,” and he is.

He’s here in front of you, crawling out of the shadows and so, so very different than the child you left impossibly chained in an ancient realm. He was something dark before but now he’s the black of the void between dead stars. He was something powerful before but now he’s the burst of energy from a hypernova destroying everything in his path.

And he doesn’t care what’s near or who’s close. He might have before, if you let him grow into something that could care but he can’t now. All he knows now is that you’re one of the fuckers who chained him to a tree and sewed his eyes shut, his mouth shut until he couldn’t even sob. All he knows is that you were the easiest one to find and you’ll be the first one to die, isn’t that nice?

“Please,” you breathe but what does your kind know about mercy?

“Nothing,” he snarls and it grates on your ears and-how do you understand him? Understand him perfectly and exactly with no guessing and mistakes? Huh maybe it’s one of those ‘mystery of the omniverse’ things, it’s not like _you’ll_ live long enough to figure it out, right?

Look at him after all, all seething hatred wrapped in shadows- ** _Look_** _. **At. Him**._

Look at what you did and what you made. Look at the beautiful silver thread stained with black blood, **_his_** black blood. Look at the impossible to break silver chains wrapped around his knuckles, look at how eaten away the metal is and realise **_his_** blood did that. Look at him when he claws at his own face so he can break the threads anew.

Look at those pitch-black eyes and repent because these are your sins come back to damn you.

Falling to your knees won’t help but he likes it.

“I-spare me.” Begging for your life won’t save you but he enjoys it.

Spitting broken teeth when he hits you across the face won’t kill you but he relishes in it.

Dying won’t satisfy him but he’ll accept it. So stay still and scream loud as the impossible to break chain wrapped around his broken knuckles break your ribs. Louder when he claws into your soft, vulnerable undersides. Shriek as he rips the wings from your back with his teeth, those sharp and too many teeth he didn’t know how to use before but wield with precision now.

Shiver and shake while he tears you to pieces, breaks your bones, spills your blood. Moan and cry as he licks your blood from his lips, laps it off his hands. Sob and screech as he wraps the chains you gave him around your throat and pulls hard, _harder_ , **_harde_** -

“Dead,” he giggles but you’re not here to hear it anymore, are you. Don’t bother correcting, it wasn’t a question darling, a simple observation.  Your wide eyes see nothing but he plucks them from your head all the same, chokes them down and smacks his lips in manic glee. Your lolling tongue speaks no words but he rips it from your mouth and squeezes it over his mouth, milking it for every sweet drop. Your heart, well it still beats, confused over your sudden death so it's the best of your pieces as he bites into it. You’re nothing to him now as he flings your mauled pieces to different realms, scatters you to the wind so to speak.

You were the first though and everyone always remembers the first, so congratulations at least. Congratulations on breeding a child as twisted and disgusting as this one and congratulations on being his first act of parenticide.

And they say the last sense to ever go is hearing so congratulations to hearing the chains and doing nothing. Congratulations to being his death and his birth.


	30. Slow Dance with You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've missed my girls

Sometimes she can’t believe this is real. Sometimes she wakes up and swears she’s in a chromosome harvest chamber and this whole life of hers is just a deranged dream. Something pretty and nice to get her through the torture of her real life.

Whenever she wakes up in a cold sweat, shaking and trembling from the intensity of her nightmares, she grabs for the person next to her. Most of the time it’s Franklin, he likes sleeping with people, in the bed with him that is. He likes to have his back to the wall and his face to the person, it makes him feel safe and they all indulge him. Tonight though, Maxine is alone in the bed and she does the other thing for when the nightmares get bad.

She climbs out of bed, legs shaking and trembling as she goes and she makes her way to the kitchen. In Kohe’s apartment she doesn’t need to put on the light, she knows her way around by heart, in Francis’ she does because she’s over there so rare. Here though, Maxine just pulls the kitchen curtains back and braces her hands on the sink as she breathes.

She looks out the window at the empty streets, at the billboard flashing lights on the opposite building and just breathes. This isn’t a dream and she’s not in a chromosome chamber, Chin Chin is dead and gone, defeated, and she’s free to do whatever she likes. She’s free to be here, in this apartment and sleep in the bed and eat the food and just exit here.

There’s no running off across realms, tracking down whatever poor soul Chin Chin wants dead or at his feet, or both. There’s no pretending to be anything she isn’t, no lies and murder and bruised knuckles and split lips. There’s just the whir of the ac and the flash out lights outside the window, there’s the cool metal sink under her hands and the cool tiles under her bare feet.

There’s quiet and there’s peace and there’s a life, her life. Maxine isn’t Mad Maxie the Chimpilla and bounty hunter anymore. Sure she still chases down bounties but only the ones she wants to, only to the realms she wants to go to, only on her terms. She’s got control now and she can do whatever she wants now and she wants to drink a beer.

And she does, she gets one from the fridge and makes a note to get more tomorrow when she goes out. Then she goes to the living room, sits on the couch with her feet propped up on the coffee table and enjoys her beer. She enjoys this life of hers and squints at the clock over the tv, tries to make out the hands and figures it must be sometime after four.

Isabella should be back soon then, back from wherever the hell Kohe had taken her this time. Maxine is glad those two get along, she really is, they’re both mortal after all and considering all the wild nonsense, mortal is pretty damn normal. She’s proud of Isabella though, for accepting all this so fast and never even trying to stab anyone with a knife.

Nope, that lovely honour went right to Franklin who thought Francis was trying to kill him, or controlling his mind or some crazy shit like that. Isabella, all she’d done was scream at them about cutting the weird shit and then actually listened while they explained what the omniverse was. Helped that Francis was around to show off with all those fancy Peacelord powers of his.

Now she’s off tramping through the safer realms and having the time of her life, Maxine’s happy for her. Happier than she can trust Kohe to bring her girl back safe and sound, her girl? Their girl? She’s not too sure, the lines between them all are pretty blurred but no one minds, or no one’s said anything so she takes that as it’s fine.

Maxine drinks her beer just like that, thinking about Franklin and Kohe and Isabella while the hour ticks by and her heart calms down. She has no idea how long she sat there in the dark, holding the empty bottle and breathing slow before the doorknob turned. She hadn’t even heard the keys on the other side of it, or anyone walking up the hall. Maybe she’d drowsed off without realising.

“You’re still up?” Isabella asks quietly, shucking off her jacket and stepping out of her shoes. She’s wearing the shiny shirt Kohe got for her, the one with the sparkling sequins, and her new favourite jeans, the ones that hug her ass nicely. Maxine didn’t know they were going to the bar but she guesses it should’ve been obvious. There aren’t many realms Kohe would stay so late in and still consider it safe, the bar though, well the Devil owned that bar and no one would dare try shit there.

“How was your set?” Maxine asks instead of answering, getting her feet off the coffee table and standing. Now that Isabella’s home she won’t have any problem getting back to sleep or staying asleep and she knows Isabella’s tired too, always is after a playing for a crowd.

She expects an arm around her waist as they walk back to the bedroom so the fingers curling around her hip don’t startle her, the ones that entwine with her free though, are. She’s pulled into the kitchen before she even knows what’s going on and moving while she does; dancing. She’s dancing, with Isabella leading, or they’re moving at least and it’s to some rhythm only her purple girl knows.

Maxine doesn’t mind, she follows her girl’s lead and goes with it. She smiles as they dance back and forth across the kitchen, swaying slowly as they go and smiling sleepily at each other. She really has no idea why they’re doing this but she’s glad she can, that she got the chance. She’s holding her girl close with her free hand on her hip and she’s dancing in a dark kitchen.

This isn’t something she ever thought she could have, nothing she ever thought she’d want. Domesticity? Not Mad Maxie, definitely not, but she’s not Mad Maxie anymore, yeah?

She’s not, she’s just Maxine now. She’s Maxine and this is Isabella Gwen and she’s happier than she’s ever been.


	31. Late Night Vibes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's a peacelord, a God, the Universe. He's only human.

Sometimes, when everything is quiet, too quiet, so quiet that the silence is pounding- _gonging_ - ** _banging_** in his head. Frank heads out. He leaves the apartment and all his sleeping friends, and goes walking through the city that’s his home now in the realm he only feels a little out of place in.

He’s a creature that’s meant to destroy all of this, he’s a chaos bringer, a God maybe, but he’s human too. All this, everything that’s happened, but Frank’s still human, he doesn’t know if that’s his curse or his strength.

When he goes walking though, none of that matters. The buildings don’t care what he is, the people inside, sleeping, studying, fucking, they don’t care about some weird fuck out in the street. The cars putting by don’t slow down and the drivers don’t look, he’s a ghost, a shadow, but not really.

Late at night, Frank’s just part of the city. He’s nothing special, just a person, and it helps calm the roaring-raging chaos in his head. Breathing in the cool, polluted air reminds him that humanity isn’t perfect, and he’s not perfect either. He’s not the messiah or the pariah, he’s just human.

A human who can wander down streets that are covered in moss, that have plants growing up through the cracks in the concrete. Streets in the future, after a war, after population migration, after Frank doesn’t know what. Time’s tricky and sometimes it overlaps.

Sometimes he walks down streets that are taken over by plantlife, where creatures with glowing eyes watch him from the alleys and crosswinds blow hot. Sometimes he cuts across roads where the pavement’s broken up and pitted, where the buildings are smouldering from a fire he didn’t get to see. Sometimes he has to pick his way across streams with little croaking frogs and sometimes he turns around and walks away from piles of rotting corpses.

He never knows what happened or will happen, he just gets to see it, and walk away from it. It’s all this city, the one he’s a part of. Nothing ever bothers him when he walks by, not the animals that perk up when they catch his scent, or the people hiding behind husked out cars and in the bombed-out buildings.

Maybe they know what he is, sense it. Maybe they’re tired of fighting, killing, living, and pretend he’s not there. Maybe they’re just like the people in the time he’s really from, they see him and know he’s from here. New York never gives you shit if it knows you, it’s like a living, breathing creature that way.

Nearly every single one of his walks ends at a café. No matter if he’s gotta pick his way across a chasm with a rickety rope bridge or has to figure out a way around a minefield. All roads lead to a café tucked away in a street off the main road.

Non-descript little place, nothing too special. Never has a name, no signs advertising what it is, but the music is always there. Quiet, unobtrusive, it’s the kind of music you’d get if you recorded spoons clinking and pencil scratching on paper and someone singing in the apartment next to you at three in the morning. It’s a sad kind of music, a late-night kind of music, it’s not something for bright mornings or lazy afternoons.

Frank always hears the music first, and it always pulls him in, tugs. Never pulls. The music is like a stray dog that knows you, one that you feed but can’t keep, it nudges him behind the knees and bounds ahead but always turns back to make sure he’s following.

Truthfully, the music reminds him of George, the late nights in a city he had to learn, the music beating his chest that he had to break open his ribs to record. Frank walks into the café and wonders if it’s a place in George’s realm, his New York, but he knows it isn’t. Can’t be.

The café is never well lit but it’s not dark. There are lights, soft yellow ones that make it feel like the streetlights outside are the real source. There are shadows in the corners and across the tables, lingering by the counter and slanting across every patron’s face. No one is special there, no one matters, and everyone’s alone.

Frank doesn’t think anyone can bring another person to the café, it’s a place that you have to find on your own, when you only have yourself. He’s been coming here for…years. Slipping out into the night, through the night, and finding his way here. He’s a regular in a place that doesn’t have regulars.

He has a table all his own, no one else ever sits there. His table is right by the glass, looking out into the street, and he as a cup that’s always sitting there for him. A mug with a fish on the side and steam rising from the fresh coffee that’s always there, always waiting. No one ever comes to take his order, no one ever refills his mug, but a waitress always comes by with a slice of apple pie and he never runs out of coffee.

Frank spends his nights there, whenever he gets there. He eats his pie, bite by bite, chin propped on his fist, gazing out the window into the night. He looks at the buildings, mostly dark except for the one or two people up late, working, worrying, loving. He drinks his coffee, sip by sip, and glances at the people in the café.

They never have faces, no one has faces there, but he can make out features. There’s a brown-haired girl across from him, she’s chubby, her smile is beautiful. There’s a blond guy by the counter, back to Frank, shoulders slumped and looking down. A new person walks through the door and he makes out cat green eyes before a shadow falls across their face and they walk up to the counter.

They could all be regulars, the brown-haired girl, the boy by the counter, the person with cat eyes, Frank wouldn’t know. This café isn’t the kind of place where you meet people, it’s not for flirting or small talk, it’s for…existing. Existing without meaning, a place where you don’t matter.

And that should be bad, should be bone-chilling, spine-tingling terrible, but it’s not because existing is hard. Living is hard. Hearing stars screaming from lightyears away is _hard_. Flinching at the roars of creatures from realms ago is _hard_. Being this chaos creature, peace lord, is hard and Frank, Frank’s only human.

Sometimes he needs a walk, some music, a piece of pie. Sometimes hot coffee in a cup with a fish on the side and quiet music is all he can handle.

Tomorrow, he’ll be something more again. When he gets up, leaves his mug and his plate for next time, and walks out the door, he’ll be someone again. When he closes his eyes one step out of the café, when the music muffles and dies away, when he walks out and notices the clouds just turning pink. When he leaves the café and goes back home, he’ll be everything he is and was meant to be.

For now, he’s no one, and that’s fine.


End file.
